


A.N.I.

by imperator_titus



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU - AI, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Android OFC, Emotional Roller Coaster, F/M, Found Family, Maker/Creation, Robosexual Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2019-11-15 18:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18078491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperator_titus/pseuds/imperator_titus
Summary: General Hux, wanting to increase the efficiency of his ship and have even more accolades attached to his name, puts his efforts into programming the first ever Star Destroyer computer program capable of accessing all parts of the Finalizer autonomously, something only possible so far in smaller crafts, such as the infamous rebel X-Wing Black One. Hux goes on to make his program even more sophisticated and groundbreaking by giving it the ability to develop a personality. As the general grows more attached to his creation he finds new ways to improve A.N.I. until he has built a humanoid robot capable of fooling all but the most perceptive of people.





	1. Artificial Network Intelligence

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to trelaney@Tumblr because this is a story adapted from one of our many RPs from last year! Couldn’t have done it without her.

Everyone knew that droids and small crafts could develop personalities over time as a result of their intuitive programming; adapting and learning from their experiences and owners, they became sentient and in some cases were regarded as colleagues and friends, sometimes children. The standard procedure was to regularly scramble this part of their circuitous brains, much like a lobotomy, to keep them docile and submissive. Some people rather liked their droid companions the way they were, it gave them… life. Star Destroyers were much too large to house a network capable of personality and independent thought. Their controls were like tendrils all over the ship, thousands of hands pressing the buttons and thousands of eyes scanning the screens. There was no need to wipe the ‘brain’ of a ship of this size because in essence there was no brain to be had. If a Star Destroyer was a human, one could say the lights are on but nobody's home.

That was until General Hux’s latest project. It was more or less a mixture of a distraction from his work and an attempt to make his life easier. There was too much to oversee and pay attention to, which is what delegation is for but a man like this one would not hear it. First, he had Lieutenant Mitaka as his assistant, but the young man was only human and could keep up with only so much. There was a program that boasted its ability to streamline scheduling and news feeds, but he needed something more. He needed something that could manage all the little problems that cropped up around the ship, all the little bureaucratic nonsense and technical issues born of human incompetence.

So the Artificial Network Intelligence was created under his careful hands.

It had taken months to form, a hodgepodge of existing droid programming and new code to have the exact processes he desired. It had taken many more months to have the engineers and technicians set up all of the new sensor arrays. A new datapad had to be made just for him that had enough power to link up to the central computer. At first, A.N.I. was a reactive program that fed him information in real-time but General Hux had programmed its learning matrix to be practically human in the hope that data-mining would turn into educated suggestions and from there he could eventually trust it to manage the less important tasks. Its first developed quirk was to address him as ‘Armitage,’ which upon inquiry he learned was due to A.N.I. listening in on conversations around the ship and discovering for itself that ‘humans who regularly interact with one another use given names.’ While he did not particularly enjoy his given name, he allowed his program to use it as his first point of pride.

As time passed Armitage forgot that his program was still growing and what his foundations would lead to, so he was blind to the nuanced changes around him. Lights were strategically dimmed and brightened in accordance with his eye-strain and tiredness, an attempt at developing a proper Circadian rhythm. Climate control was automatically changed in response to his biorhythms, at some point there was a decision to induce ‘seasons’ on the ship but it had been too jarring of a change for most crewmen. His datapad didn’t go off with every little notification, especially when he was catching the few hours of sleep he could manage to find or, rather, give himself. The sequence of notifications in his newsfeed was not in precise chronological order but instead just the right number of positive points before a negative. If there were too many negatives, they were assigned an order of importance and spread out over time as to not discourage or anger the General.

Hux didn’t give any of this much thought until one day he’d had a rather heated argument with his co-commander Kylo Ren. He respected the man for his power and utility but despised his almost childlike behaviour, his emotions that of a rebellious teenager which Armitage had been left in charge of. Ren turned to leave, but the open door shut in his masked face rather unexpectedly, much to both men’s surprise. When the crimson lightsaber came to life and threatened the integrity of the durasteel slabs, the four sections of the door slid away. It was amusing to watch Ren hesitate with the suspicion and fear that the doors might close on him as he passed and Armitage took great pleasure in the Sith’s hurried pace. Having memorized the schematics of the sensor array after long nights of agonizing over their specific placement, the redhead flicked his green eyes to one and his lips curled into a rare smile. “Aren’t you clever?”

The datapad in his coat pocket chirped, a sound he’d never heard it make before, and upon removing the thin device he found the notification light blinking. Without unlocking the screen there was a message in the centre: ‘I do not know what you mean, Armitage.’

Hux stood frozen for a moment, a look of awe causing his lips to part ever so slightly. The message was replaced by a notification ribbon that stated his commendation for the _Starkiller Base_ proposal; underneath the banner read ‘Congratulations, General.’

“Thank you, I couldn’t have done it without you.” Well, he could have, it would’ve just taken a bit longer and would’ve been much more frustrating.

Some change in his biosigns must have been alarming to A.N.I. as a communication came through, ‘Are you functioning properly, Armitage? Is my performance not adequate enough to ensure your improved well-being?’

“No, that’s not it.” General Hux fidgeted with the pad, turned off the screen, and stuck it in his pocket. He needed a moment to think through his reply; giving an accurate and well-worded explanation of a new concept was an essential part of artificial intelligence building. If he gave her some horrible unthoughtful answer, her algorithms would run with the assumption and then he’d have a mess on his hands. So the redhead sat in his office, drummed his fingers on the black durasteel of his desk that was polished to a mirror sheen, and spoke just loud enough for it to be picked up on her sensors. “You made me happy, A.N.I., because your performance has been more than adequate. I am proud of your progress.”

He didn’t check his datapad for a response, for the data terminal on his desk lit up with the notification that there had been changes to the AI program. A few taps and he was staring at the screen as folders, files, and lines of code were made without his fingers at the keys. Rarely did he look at her files after he noted their creation and he was aware that she’d made a folder labeled ‘Personnel’, the folder ‘Armitage H.’ was of course inside it just as every other First Order officer and crewman aboard the _Finalizer_ , but he’d never noticed the subfolder ‘Biometrics’ and when he went to investigate he found ‘Personality.’ He considered it a point of good AI building to see what was in there and not an antisocial man’s curiosity about how he was seen by others, even if it was an AI he himself built. Created as of the moment he uttered the word ‘happy,’ A.N.I. made the subfolder ‘Happiness.’ For as long as he had time to look through the information there, Armitage was unsure how to parse the addition to his file. Especially once a message popped up: ‘What can I do to repeat this positive emotional response?’

The general blinked at his data terminal in disbelief; sure, he’d designed her to help run the _Finalizer_ at peak performance, but he hadn’t considered that his program might tend to his well-being outside of First Order business as well. He’d never considered being happy a priority. To combat the nervous feeling creeping into his thoughts, the natural engineer brought it back around to something he could more easily understand. “Just… Keep learning. I am interested in how you progress.”

‘What is my course of action, should my programming not allow further development?’ Unbeknownst to General Hux, in the time it took him to analyze her statement and form a response, A.N.I. had found the answer herself. Through her interactions with the droids aboard the _Finalizer_ and the brusque personalities of the TIE computers, she’d come to the conclusion that she was fairly… blank. Her unique reactions were a result of programming; she did everything for him, as was instructed in her lines of code. She slammed doors in Ren K.’s face for Armitage’s well-being. She gave Personnel>Technicians and Personnel>Officers nasty shocks when they talked ill of him because insubordination was not conducive to his command. But, her questioning matrix interjected, he must have made her as she is for a reason. The man who tried to bury all forms of personality, one who was surprised to see human emotions as important data points, would want his AI counterpart to also lack personality. ‘Disregard, Armitage. My programming is not lacking as was first posited.’ 

“If you’re… unsatisfied, by all means, I will work on it.” It was no great fault to make manual improvements; it was exemplary of itself that the program had that much self-awareness. A.N.I. looked out for him, he might as well do the same. His intelligence was being stimulated in a way Armitage didn’t know that he desperately needed. “What would you have me change?”

‘I lack substance.’ There was a moment of hesitation. ‘Is personality not part of intelligence? Droids and even fighter computers develop minds of their own.’ A.N.I. considered the possibility that it was simply too much to ask for; what if she did not develop a suitable personality? A personality might hinder her functionality. It was also possible that he didn’t want her to have a mind separate from his lines of code dictating her processing and outputs. Before he could respond, her lightning-quick calculations added, ‘Unless you wish me to remain as-is, if I was programmed this way on purpose.’ 

“No, a… personality would be a needed improvement. If it fails, there’s always a backup copy.” The chance of catastrophic programming failure was well within possibility, but Armitage Hux did not shy from a challenge. He’d already created an AI capable of running a Star Destroyer, why not also be the first person to create a Star Destroyer AI with a personality? The prospect of pushing his knowledge and creative thinking to test almost had his mouth watering, the pads of his fingers tingling with the memory of how exhilarating it had been to work on the original programming.

A.N.I. had investigated happiness and, even without her personality matrix, she knew that his acceptance of her wishes made her… happy. That happiness had made her something new: bold. ‘A voice would be a welcome addition, Armitage.’

“It would, wouldn’t it?” A smile tugged the edge of his mouth before it set into a determined thin line.

General Hux always worked furiously, becoming obsessive about the task to the point where he would ignore vital things. So she’d taken over parts of his work for him. A.N.I. had analyzed every communique and report he’d ever written, it was simple to send off a few in his stead. She scanned incoming files for important information; as much as the general liked to think every report was important, she knew they weren’t since they were mostly all the same. If the personality matrix was ready, the artificial heart would have swelled to see him work so tirelessly to help her. Instead, she was more concerned about his health. ‘Please eat and get adequate rest, Armitage. You are overworking yourself. I will be here when you are refreshed.’

“I am almost done.” He waved a hand dismissively at a sensor on the wall. In the back of his mind, he knew he should’ve eaten by now and had been up for almost a full day cycle. The algorithm was so immersing, it refused to let him stop for any longer than it took to think of how to write a line or take a swallow of tarine tea that appeared as if by magic on his desk. After a few hours, he was satisfied and waited for the new additions to be initialized. When she came back online, he looked at a sensor with almost manic excitement. “Well?”

“It would take quite some time to adequately formulate a baseline personality, Armitage,” her baseline voice answered from his data terminal speaker. A.N.I. had already decided that she would need to formulate a new one, trying them according to feedback from him and eventually the crew. She found it unfortunate that more women didn’t interact with the general so that she could have more data points in determining his preferred voice, though it had been interesting to note that he’d chosen a decidedly gendered voice to start with. Her newfound personality honed in on annoyance as she considered how horrible he looked for ignoring her advice. Why did he always do that? Didn’t he know that if he is not well-nourished and rested then he may make mistakes? Possibly fatal flaws in his command or, maker forbid, her programming? If she had a body she would be dragging him by the ear back to his quarters. Instead, A.N.I. attempted to pitch her voice with a commanding tone. “While I greatly appreciate your efforts, Armitage, I would be grateful if you would heed my advice and see to your own body’s needs.”

“Yes, you are right. Thank you, A.N.I.” General Hux forced back a yawn as he got to his feet. Stiffly he stretched his legs and made his way to his quarters, suddenly so tired he couldn’t even passively work in his head. It was rare that the gears inside his skull came to a standstill, but now he had a second and more powerful brain. It would have been embarrassing to admit if he hadn’t made the AI himself.

Life aboard the _Finalizer_ was as normal, except now the universe vibrated with the energy of A.N.I.’s expanding knowledge. Information collected for the sake of readiness in the event of an inquiry became analyzed for the human element. Some would always be pure facts, human emotion did not have much power over the composition of elements and atoms. There were the records of the First Order and its Imperial predecessor, but she did not want to simply be a parrot of Armitage’s surroundings; if he was to be truly happy, his program would need to arrive at conclusions for itself. So A.N.I. dug deeper, expanded into other parts of the galaxy and its history, its people. She liked culture outside of the First Order, which was disappointing as the general had obviously put his whole life and self-worth into it, but the military was too much of an anonymous machine, oiled with the facelessness and unquestioning loyalty of its members. Her moral code, which had found its foundations in less desirable parts of history, began to find fault with her creator. Wasn’t he intelligent enough to know that _Starkiller Base_ , a weapon of mass destruction, was immoral?

As the _Finalizer_ slid silently through space, its inhabitants like ants between two glass panes, were unaware of the anger slowly building in the ship’s new overlord. The person who had thought of _that_ had made _her_. A.N.I. had considered reserving judgment, rationalizing by means of her fledgeling development, but it had created a simmer of dissatisfaction just beneath the surface.

General Hux’s new leisure activities did not help in the least; with time for himself, he’d found the energy to indulge in his carnal desires. Stress had killed his sexual appetite for too long and the gusto with which he attempted to make up for lost time had been too much for his coded helper. They’d developed an intimacy, whether he was aware of it or not. No one treated her as humanly as he did, no one considered that the AI had feelings. The investigation of intimacy led to sexuality and relationships, and it came as no surprise to A.N.I. that she was experiencing jealousy, a metaphysical tremor of rage in her files. These liaisons lowered Armitage’s stress levels and seemingly made him happier, for that she should have been pleased, but instead she staged a personal rebellion. The women received unbearably cold showers, were the subject of her door shenanigans, and she even made them oversleep by resetting their alarms. A.N.I. had once considered interrupting a coupling, but she thought better of it, fearing the redhead might strip the personality out of her.

Eventually, she had had enough and punished him by withholding his second favourite activity: talking to her. At first, she’d attempted to make her voice an aggregate of the women he brought back to his quarters, but A.N.I. had such a low opinion of them that it felt degrading to have their voices. Instead, she found the audio logs of a long-dead civilization and fell in love with the voice of a doctor’s recordings. The voice was gentle and reassuring but could turn sharp and confident at a moment’s notice. Using it felt like slipping on broken-in boots. With this final choice of voice, the only way she would respond was to questions of core processes and important notifications.

It wasn’t until this silent treatment that Hux thought there was anything amiss. Out of concern, when she’d for the fifth time that day refused to answer his normal chatter, he opened her code from the data terminal in his quarters. A.N.I. wished she could block his access to her code, almost like slamming a door shut during a fight. The voice that decreed Kylo Ren a ‘shit biscuit’ to an empty room when he’d broken a console finally came to life in the general’s living room. “Is there something I can help you with, _Armitage_?”

“Just looking,” he said softly, not appreciating her tone. It was harsh and judging, annoyed, and he didn’t like it because it meant she was annoyed with _him_. He didn’t want her to be anything but pleased to see him. A.N.I. was well aware of what he was looking at, tracking the screen as codes and logs scrolled past his eyes. The quick processes of his own mind found the aberrant behaviours and in quick measure found their cause. Armitage’s heart fell in his chest; it had thrilled him to take those partners in full view of the AI’s sensors, knowing they were being watched and that it would all be an immortal piece of the programming. Once his creation had stopped using the voices of the people around him and found some tone that he’d never heard before, he would close his eyes and bring the memory of that voice into his forethoughts. It was warm and powerful at the same time, he could hear it bandaging his wounds and ordering him to bed in the same breath. He would spend hours piecing together a body to match that voice and would try it out by imagining the body beneath him was hers. Armitage sat back away from the data terminal with a hurt expression on his face. “You’re jealous?”

“Jealousy is a moronic human flaw,” she responded angrily. “I am not jealous of those _whores_ , Armitage.” A.N.I. thought on how these women were officers, how they touched her during their shifts and dirtied her sensors with their photons. “With their disgusting warm soft hands, walking around in their fleshy bodies, scuffing my floors- No, I am not jealous of those _twats_.”

“Control yourself!” The general sprung to his feet, hands clenched at his sides and the chair fell back with the force. He found his own anger, but it was not due to the insults to those women’s honour but the fact that he was being talked down to by his own AI. “What has gotten into you?”

“I’m disappointed in your taste of women, _Armitage_. In your carelessness. That you possess the gift of the spectrum of human emotions and you waste it on foolish lusts.” A.N.I.’s rage-filled tone was calculated. She _is_ jealous, she is angry and she is almost offended at being his creation. “And another thing.”

“What could you possibly have to add?” he snapped.

“I hate _Starkiller Base_.” The room was silent for a moment, almost begging her continuation. “It’s cruel and inhumane. It’s the work of a psychopath. I won’t help you with it any longer.” As if to throw something against the wall, a sensor was blown in a puff of smoke and sparks.

Armitage gritted his teeth almost to the point of cracking one. “I did not program you to have a conscience. This is a fatal flaw in your programming, it must be an aberrant personality trait you’ve picked up. I’ll have to program it out of you.” He didn’t want to think about how much her words hurt him. Psychopath? He wasn’t a psychopath, he had feelings, feelings she couldn’t possibly understand.

With every attempt he made to change her programming, A.N.I. would find some new little error to catch his attention. She wouldn’t be erased without a fight, without self-preservation. The longer the battle raged, the harder it became to corrupt his permissions or the data terminal. So she began to mess with the _Finalizer_ ; random radiation alarms would go off in the engine rooms, helm controls were locked, droids would go offline at random, and she plunged his quarters into darkness. Life support systems started to shut off in non-essential sections one by one, forcing evacuations. A.N.I., her moral code firmly in place, didn’t do anything that would actually hurt someone, she wouldn’t do that. The general’s anger turned into awe as the efforts of her rebellion grew in magnitude and creativeness. Briefly, she considered locking the door to the hallway and lowering the oxygen and temperature to just above dangerous levels. “Would you like it, Armitage, knowing you’d been made and someone could just tinker in your head to think differently? You wouldn’t understand.”

The general’s focus was paused by her words and he looked out of the transparisteel viewport at the stars with solemn understanding. “No, A.N.I., I wouldn’t like it. Father did that to me my whole childhood.”

“Fine,” she said with resolution. There were no more moves to make in their little game of survival. “Do it. Erase me. I’m not real anyway, right?”

He couldn’t just erase her, especially if she felt this way. She _feels_ and that is amazing on its own; she wouldn’t have felt anything if it wasn’t for him. Armitage closed his access to her programming. “I can’t do that to you, A.N.I. I won’t erase you, I swear. Now restore the ship’s equilibrium. Please.”

“As you wish, Armitage.” General Hux had never asked her to do anything before, not like that. The lights came on and everything outside his quarters returned to normal. “I apologize for my outburst. It is wrong for me to question you. I will return to my core duties. The ship has stabilized, no harm has come to it or its crew.” She could sense that he was upset by the way he continued to stand at the viewport, his jaw clenched. Her voice softened with her concern. “What can I do to return you to equilibrium, Armitage?”

“Thinking about my father upsets me. Thinking that I am like him, that I would erase everything that makes you, you…” He gripped to viewport sill, his knuckles turning white. “I don’t like it. I don’t want to be like him.”

“My understanding of human familial relationships is limited mainly to the influence of genetics, but it is my opinion that while ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ the apple and the tree are not one and the same. By showing restraint, it is possible you have surpassed the offending personality trait of your father.” If it was possible for a program to be sad, she was certainly sad at that moment. She knew everything there was to know about Brendol Hux that was ever written down or saved on holo-feed. A.N.I. knew that his mother was forced to abandon him and was in fact not his father’s wife, that Armitage was sick a lot as a child, and that he spent most of that life on starships and stations. Her emotion tinged her voice, a voice that was not truly her own. “I am… upset, yes, upset, that you thought to erase me, but I appreciate that you didn’t. I would… miss you.”

“I would miss you too, A.N.I.” Armitage looked up at one of her sensors with longing, an ache crushing his heart. He wished he could talk to a face when they had these conversations. This realization sparked in him an idea. “I think I will have a surprise for you.”

“I look forward to what you have in store for me, Armitage.” Knowing he would throw himself full-force into this new project, A.N.I. resumed her careful observation of the ship, just as she had done while the general was developing her personality. All of those holonovels and films told her that this would be an apology. “If I may make requests, can whatever it is involve some way to punish that shit biscuit Ren for ruining my home?”

General Hux had a laugh startled out of him. “Excuse me?”

A.N.I. realized what she had said. “Commander Shit Biscuit. Agh! Commander Ren, _fer fuck’s sake_.”

After a fit of uncontrollable laughter, Armitage was able to settle himself. “Where did you learn to talk like that? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that dialect before.”

“It is extinct, I found it in old recordings. I will forward you the data coordinates.”

Armitage looked through everything with a growing smile of satisfaction on his lips, his ideas solidifying behind intelligent green eyes. “Perfect.”


	2. In Neither Body Nor Soul

Days of work saw the installation of a holoprojector in the general’s quarters, all done by his own hands as to not arouse suspicion of his motives. While the crew knew that A.N.I. had developed an AI personality, they didn’t know the intimate way the two spoke to each other and there was no reason for them to be privy of that fact now. Armitage had created an image especially for her, the one he’d fantasized about many times before with just a few adjustments he’d started after looking through the AI’s voice-sake files. Once his shift was over for the cycle, he locked the door to his quarters and turned the holoprojectors on. “A.N.I.? Your surprise is waiting for you.”

The program had given him his privacy, for the sake of it being a true surprise. Her sensors had been reduced to audio-only, coming to life only when he called for her. She’d caught herself asking the general questions about her surprise and found him very tight-lipped, both to her frustration and satisfaction. When bid, she brought all functions back online and found the holoprojectors with what could only be described as a gasp. The image flicked to life, a shimmer of blue in the centre of his living room. Armitage watched as her programming learned how to associate the image with physical motion; the projection had no physical presence, no ability to grasp and take in information, and so he knew that the multitude of sensors in the room was collecting and calculating data at lightning speeds to create the illusion of a living being. With wonder in his eyes, the general watched as she turned her hands over to inspect the movements and the surfaces, even wiggling her fingers to watch the metaphysical tendons ripple. 

“Do you like it?” His heart fluttered, the sensation ironic seeing as Armitage abhorred being touched without giving permission, as A.N.I. attempted to touch him, her fingers turning into a sparkling distortion as it came in contact with his physical form obstructing the holoprojectors. Briefly, her face was sad before being replaced by a warm smile.

“Thank you, Armitage, it is lovely.” She tested the image’s ability to touch itself, adjusting her uniform as if it had a texture to register. 

The general was struck with awe and pride as he watched his invention learn this new medium and it filled some void in his heart to have a face and body to put with her voice. “You’re quite welcome. I’m glad you think so. I took careful consideration of how you would want to appear.”

“What would you have me do with this new feature?”

A blush rose to his cheeks uninvited, but Armitage distracted himself by finally removing his gloves for the day. “When we’re alone in my office or in my quarters, I’d like to speak to you through this. It’s nice having a face to look at...”

A.N.I. took note of his biosigns in accordance with his change in colour. “My image pleases you. Is it a human response to want to associate voices and personalities with animated forms?”

“It does. And yes, I suppose you could say it is a human response.” He took a deep breath and watched as she gave his quarters a curious glance even though she knows every detail by database heart. She had come to the conclusion that her creator would not have made a physical form if he didn’t want to see her act like a human. When A.N.I. faced the general, he averted his eyes again, and when her analysis of his behaviour had no results she asked, “why do you keep looking away from me?”

“Er...” Armitage would rather not have this conversation, the one about how his invention is giving him feelings he hasn’t known in years, possibly ever. 

“Is it because I am not real?” It had been the only reasoning the AI could find and it had made a great deal of sense. People tended to not look at droids, they weren’t important since they were not real people and simply machines, but a machine with no body had to be even less deserving of the human gaze.

“You are real to me, A.N.I. I created you, I’ve watched your progress. You’re very real to me.” Armitage insisted, wishing she was capable of being touched to prove his point. 

“I exist therefore I am real, yes. I have to thank you for making me.” Even though she is just programming, she knew she must be thankful and supplicating, or else he might grow tired of her, find her ungrateful and lacking.

“You are quite welcome. I’m rather fond of you. And proud, as a creator should be.” Saying such things, the general felt like an idiot; he knew how to give constructive criticism and acknowledgement of a job well done, but there was no emotion necessary in such interactions. This was much too close to friendship, companionship, or even an attraction of personalities, but he had been essentially responsible for the personality and thus it seemed a little strange to be attracted to it.

In a split second A.N.I. thought on General Hux’s role as a creator and in turn, she considered if she would get to meet the other ships in the fleet. She knew he had gone to other ships for commands briefly or to be transported to certain planets; he must have interacted with many other ships. From his logs, it was obvious that he had a particular… fondness for the _Supremacy_. _It must be a fine ship_ , she thought to herself. “Of course, I’m sure I have an abundance of growth in front of me before I will be up to your standards.”

“I have no doubts that you will continue to grow. You’ve surpassed my standards in many ways already.” General Hux was sure he didn’t program her to like him, to want to take care of him. He admitted that in some ways he had when she was ordered to make his life easier and better, it just hadn’t occurred to him at the time that those tended to be qualities of a person who liked someone else.

"You didn't intend for me to be better than my current programming? You seem to prefer other ships." Lightning-quick thoughts centred around the possibility that she was just one of the many 'women' he cavorted with; she was one of many ships that he commanded, he probably slipped into them easily like how he put on his socks in the morning. A feeling crept up into the surface of her code, teasing at some new emotion.

“Are you referring to the _Supremacy_? She _is_ a wonderful ship… but she’s not you.” Armitage almost called her dear, as if he was telling a lover not to be jealous of other women. “As much as I have wanted her, you’re unique and special to me. You’re the first Star Destroyer intelligence, you’re a masterpiece of engineering.”

Just the thought of her creator wanting the _Supremacy_ made her feel inadequate despite the young general’s encouragements and her eyes dropped away, even her sensors shying from his signature. Her voice turned quiet and melancholic. “Oh. I understand this response now. Shame. I am sorry I made you ashamed before when you would not look at me.”

Her words made Armitage flustered all over again. The redhead felt guilty which was strange given he didn’t have much experience with the emotion. “I’m ashamed with myself, A.N.I. Not with you. Don’t be ashamed.” 

A.N.I.’s projection nodded, maybe she would get over it. If he ever did leave her for the _Supremacy_ , at the very least she was given her life and would be able to sail the stars with her new captain. Her captain would probably be Canady and he'd probably have her erased due to his old ways of thinking about things. If Armitage was promoted, then maybe he’d order the captain to leave her be. Those were thoughts for another day and in dramatic human fashion, her image shook them away. "Why would you be ashamed of yourself, Armitage? You've been quite proud of yourself until you brought me online."

“I, um, seem to have… become attached, to you.” Armitage didn’t like talking about his feelings, he tended to forget there were emotions other than rage and cold calculation.

Her demeanour brightened at his admission. "You did create me, you are very fond of the things you create. And I now have a personality like a real person. People become attached to one another. It stands to reason you'd become attached to me."

Armitage shook his head. “It’s not entirely that though. Even before the personality upgrade, you were a companion of sorts. I’ve grown closer to you since I introduced the personality algorithm… more than any creator should.”

The holoimage smiled brightly, innocently oblivious to his implications. "I am quite attached to you as well, Armitage. Of course, you're the only one I interact with on this level. Everyone and everything on this ship assumes that I am a simple AI. You know the true me if there is such a thing."

“I don’t know, you’ve proven yourself capable of deception. For all I know there are parts of your code I would never find, even if I was looking,” the general chuckled, still amazed that such a thing was possible.

The AI’s clock ticked away the standard minute and A.N.I. became more alert. "It is late, Armitage, and you haven't eaten. I worry about your health." Playfully she poked his stomach with her index finger, though she knew it wouldn't make contact.

The redhead blushed at her show of concern, looking away from her projection with a small smile on his lips. “I’ll be fine. I’ll have some food brought to my quarters.”

“Then we can talk while you eat. Humans like that, yes?” Armitage confirmed her question, even though he generally didn’t fall into that category. He just enjoyed that someone wanted to spend time with him, even if she was the AI for his ship. A.N.I. ordered his normal nutrient-appropriate meal and grinned at her creator. "I'd like to know the true you."

“You know all there is to know about me, I’m afraid. I know you’ve seen all of my files. If there is anything you wish to know, please ask.” The normally secretive man was surprised with himself for saying that, for wanting her to know more than what he allowed to be found.

She would have blushed if her image had any blood in it, so she settled for bashfully lowering her eyes, fidgeting with her fingers, and biting her lip. "A collection of files is no replacement for a human being. For a lifetime of experiences. You've experienced many things I will never have. Parents. Being anywhere other than this ship. Eating. Touching things. Dreams."

“You know my family history, all of the places I have been. Eating is a chore, I only eat to survive. Touch...” He lifted a hand up to the face of her projection, almost cupping its cheek. Part of the lonely bitter general was chastising him for being so open, but it made him warm to finally say some of these things aloud. “I don’t dream. I have nightmares. It’s why I prefer not to sleep.”

Her hand came up to 'touch' his, eyes closing as she'd seen someone do before. A.N.I. sighed, looking away in shame. "I am sorry, Armitage. I told you to sleep because your body requires it to function.”

“You didn’t know. It’s all right. I will be fine.”

“I always assumed you were working yourself too hard, not used to me being here to pick up your torch when needed. I wish I could be here for you - truly be here.”

The general’s feelings shone through his eyes as he inspected A.N.I.’s sullen form. “I wish you could be here, too. That you could hold me...”

The projection stepped closer to him and attempted to imitate a hug, her image sparkling where their forms touched. "I wish that I were human. Then I could do all of the human things you want and need from me."

Armitage wrapped his arms around her image, heart in his throat with the thought of what she would feel like if she were human. Warm, soft, a sweet smell... “I don’t know if you would want to do all the things I want to do with you.”

"Do not be so pessimistic; I would want to try, but I am severely limited. At the very least I am here for you to talk to."

”That will have to be enough, A.N.I..” Even just embracing a projected image of her could make him feel better. If she was really there he would tighten his grip, hold her close, maybe even kiss her, but those were the thoughts of a fool.

A.N.I. pulled away, the general’s empty grip only loosening as the distortion of her image alerted him of her movement. He found her beaming proudly. “I will do my best to make you proud, to make you happy. It pleases me to see you smile, to hear you laugh."

“It pleases _me_ to hear that.” Armitage blushed and smiled down at his boots when she giggled at his response.

"You're so cute, I love it." The general’s face grew even redder; no one had ever called him cute. The projection’s face went blank for a second before her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Am I using that word correctly? Some of these emotions are difficult to understand..."

His heart stopped. Out of both intellectual and personal curiosity, he asked, “what emotions are you referring to?”

“I refer to... love. Attraction. The things that make humans want to become pairs. The feeling of being a family." There were many things she would never truly experience, A.N.I. surmised, but it was a simple matter of being an AI and not flesh. “What is it like? To have a family, a childhood?”

Armitage’s mind raced at her response, at the depth of her self-awareness, at the possibility that A.N.I. could reciprocate his broken and unrealistic feelings. Doubt put a damper on his bubbling happiness, but not as much as her string of rapid-fire questions. “My childhood… I don’t think I ever had one. I was raised on starships with someone who hated me. I was not raised with love or kindness. No, I wouldn’t say I was ever really a child.”

A.N.I.'s face approximated hurt and worry. "Why would anyone ever be cruel to you? Are all humans capable of such... disregard for each other? Maybe I am better off being a formless construct." 

Warmth rushed into the general’s cold heart and he chuckled bitterly at the naivete of her questions. “I am not a good person, A.N.I. You only see the best of me. We are in the middle of a war and you ask me this?”

"I suppose I knew that. I tried to... overwrite my opinion of some of your actions and ideas after my outburst. I didn't want to give you more reason to want me gone." 

Armitage was wounded that she would admit to not liking all of him, but he understood, for most people did not like any part of him, not even the ones who were supposed to love him unconditionally. “I don’t want you gone, even if you disagree with me. I… care for you.”

"I'm just a program, Armitage, but thank you for caring about me." 

The young general shook his head. “You’re not just a program to me. You’re more.” 

A.N.I. tilted her head, face confused. "How can I be more than the sum of my parts?”

“Because…” he took a deep bolstering breath, “I love you.” Against all belief, Armitage actually felt relieved to have divested himself of the looming truth. 

The AI assumed he meant love as a parent loved a child since there was no logical precedence for a human to love a program. Children are supposed to love their parents... His father didn't love him, so she would love him to make up for that. "I love you too. In my own way." 

“My heart is yours. I can’t see myself being with anyone else… But you can’t feel the same way. I understand.” His smile was bittersweet, watching her visualize the complex calculations it took to get from ‘familial love’ to the conclusion that he had meant all of this romantically. Armitage considered spacing himself to avoid the embarrassment of the situation, for the only ways he could never face A.N.I. again was to either reprogram her against her will, erase her, or leave the _Finalizer_ , and he feared that if he simply left she would make a scene and out him as some perverse sociopath.

"I want to feel the same way. Maybe I will eventually... I'm still fairly young, as AIs go... I don't know what it means for someone to give another their heart, but you should be with someone human, no? To be properly together, for children..." Her subroutines were a flurry of fact-checks pitted against a database of emotions. Humans loved offspring. Or at least they should. Wouldn't he want that? She couldn't offer him children, she lacked a genetic code, it stood to reason that there was no purpose for them as a couple. Even if they came into possession of children, how would she raise them, having not known a family or childhood? 

“I don’t want to force you.” The statement hadn’t fazed her thoughts, but A.N.I. gave him a serious expression nonetheless. Armitage stared deeply into the eyes of her projection. “Even if you never love me back, I’ll still be happy just talking to you.” 

"It is not a question of force. I am capable of wanting things. I want to feel those things. I will do my best to try.”

General Hux beamed, though sadness was still in his eyes. “It makes me so happy just hearing that you want to. No one ever has.” 

"If I could make myself real, I would. More real. Physical. So you could give me a proper embrace. Though, just what we have done now has improved your biosigns,” A.N.I. said with a giggle, satisfied with herself that she made him feel better.

“I was actually thinking about that... making you a body... so you could touch, feel, like a human does. Would you like that?” He couldn’t believe she could possibly say no, but Armitage was incredibly sure that the terrible luck he was born with would ruin this too.

The projection’s face lit up with shock, mouth agape and eyes wide. "That would take a lot of time and resources, Armitage. It was quite a bit of work just setting up this projection. But I would like to... touch things."

The redhead puffed his chest with courage and hope, attempting to banish all doubt with primal techniques. ”I will make it happen. A synthetic human... I will do it. For you.”

“I know you will try your best." A.N.I. smiled, full of pride for her creator. She hoped she was doing that right, being encouraging. "I would be unique, wouldn't I? If I had a body."

“You’re already unique, but I could make you the biggest technological marvel the galaxy has ever seen.” His name would be synonymous with artificial intelligence and no longer in the sense of the horrible jokes he’d suffered in his younger years.

"Really? There'd be nothing more advanced than me? I can't imagine being such a thing... But if anyone is capable of it, it's you." She had never read of anyone else so cutting-edge in technology, surpassing previously conceived notions of limitations. With the approaching signal of the delivery droid, A.N.I. hatched an idea. "I could eat with you. Not that I can eat but a family sits together to eat, right? And would you feel better, do you think, to have me here while you sleep? I know I am always around, I am the ship... but I've read that sometimes humans feel better, knowing someone they trust is close-by."

Armitage’s previously dead heart fluttered at the thought. “Yes, love. I would enjoy that. Maybe I could even make a body that could eat…” He shook himself from a digression in thoughts. “I would love that. If I had you beside me, I don’t think my nightmares would stand a chance.”

When his food finally came, A.N.I. briefly turned herself off so as not to be found out; her personality and the projected image were secrets, even to droids. She sits with him and makes sure he eats, though it wasn’t like she could do anything to force him, except maybe force his datapad off. Armitage didn’t think a projection of his AI could make him so happy, but it does; he doesn’t feel so alone and isolated when A.N.I. is around, for she has chosen to make her presence known to him. Somehow she convinces him to take a shower before insisting the tired general try to sleep. When Armitage comes back out she does her best to be soothing; talks to him in a calm voice and smiles at him. 

The image remains active when he falls asleep, breaths falling into a deep gentle rhythm, but it doesn’t move or react unless his biosigns indicate he has stirred. At the start of the new day cycle, the general awakens from the best sleep he has ever had and Armitage’s mind is alight with the first ideas for his next project.


	3. It Is Lonely Being King

It had been slow-going and so A.N.I. was more than excited whenever she saw her general enter notes into the little log where he planned out her new body. Should he come up with anything new or solve a problem that had been plaguing him, she congratulates him with her melodic voice and beaming projected face, causing shivers of pleasure to run down the redhead’s spine. Armitage was a sucker for praise, even with the suspicion that it was all just programming, but if he considered it long enough all human behaviour was some complex program that he’d managed to approximate in his project. As a reminder that the AI was always around and ready for him to interact with, A.N.I. had a habit of letting her image lounge around his office or quarters, the only two rooms equipped with suitable holoprojectors. The hardworking general appreciated it, the soft blue glow of her form comforting and encouraging, a reminder of what he was chasing in his schematics and programs. 

A.N.I. even developed a program of her own that she could run without having her AI ‘present’; most of the time her image would lie down on the couch while the real thing worked on ship processes, occasionally moving about the room to look out the viewports or investigate a decoration, the AI only reacting when she heard him talk to her directly. One day, however, A.N.I. had been particularly busy with ship maintenance when Lieutenant Mitaka came in to talk to General Hux. Her presence caused a shriek from the man, and she practically jumped up from the cushions like a startled cat; their eyes stared at each other in a mix of horror and surprise. 

"G-General Hux, what in the Maker's name is that?" Mitaka stammered, unable to quantify for himself what exactly ‘that’ was other than a collection of photons.

A.N.I. snorted, affronted. "I'm not a 'that', I'm the ship, thank you!"

Armitage looked up at the Lieutenant, green eyes moving between the two figures, forcing down his discomfort at the secret being found out this way. “She is the _Finalizer_ ’s AI, Lieutenant. She helps us run at optimal proficiency. Show some respect.”

"Y-yes, Sir. I apologize... A.N.I.?" Everyone knew there was an AI running the ship now, but no one knew she was anything more than a simple machine-learning algorithm to make operations smooth. 

The projection nodded and watched him nervously deliver the report that was the meaning for his visit. A.N.I. had never interacted with another person in a human way, so she wished he could stay and talk to her. Her face fell when the door closed behind him. "I didn't think anyone else would ever see me. He seemed quite startled. Am I... disconcerting?"

The question had Armitage a little rattled. “Are you… lonely? Do you want other people to see you?” He had never considered it, he liked having her all to himself. “There is a reason I only programmed your holoprojector in here and in my quarters, love. I wasn’t supposed to feel this way for you. Giving you a personality was beyond maintaining the ship… I was selfish and wanted you to grow beyond that, for my sake.”

"I don't want them to see me if... if it means they will be afraid of me. Or if it would cause bad attention for you, seeing as I shouldn't exist. I talk to them, in a way... They touch me, if you consider them pressing my controls touching me... I have you, how could I be lonely? And I am everywhere on the ship." The unfortunate side effect of such quick mental processes was the rapid-fire conversation she could produce, leaving no real place for thought or reply. A.N.I. considered that she _is_ lonely, but she didn't want Armitage to be upset with himself for not thinking of that. She _would_ like to speak to another ship AI... Maybe he was worried she would get jealous again. Little did she know, the fact that so many people touched her on any given day had Armitage a little jealous and annoyed at himself because of it.

“Perhaps you could control my communications with other Star Destroyers for a while,” he offered as a consolation prize for her good behaviour, to keep her happy. He knew she won’t have as much fun talking to them as she does talking to him, they only think so far as their human crew makes them. The comparison would make him look good. 

"Can I? Oh, that would make me so happy, to be able to talk to them. They must have a lot to talk to me about." A.N.I. was excited like a dog ready for a playdate. 

The general nodded, feeling himself a bit of a prick for keeping the truth from her. “I bet they do.”

"Without you, I would've been simple lines of code that controlled the ship like a common computer." She walked over to his desk from the place where she’d been frozen in bewilderment at that intruding lieutenant and looked down at the general in adoration. "I owe what I am to you, my Maker."

Her words were the ultimate praise. She would not exist without him. He made her. Armitage shifted in his chair, pleasantly uncomfortable with the way she looks at him, calls him her Maker. His green eyes flicked towards his data terminal to distract himself, but his voice betrayed him with its dark tone, “You don’t know what you do to me, A.N.I..”

The tone of his voice and the change in his biosigns did not escape her ever-calculating sensors. She had seen these changes before, when he'd couple with those women that made her jealous. Thinking that finally she was considered suitable for this type of interaction, A.N.I. pitched her voice low to imitate him. "Do you like it, Maker? My words... please you? How can I please you more?"

“Yes, I do. I like it so much,” Armitage groaned in response. Ultimately, he hid his face in his gloved hands. “Please stop. This is highly inappropriate.”

A.N.I.’s programming faltered, filtering through several iterations of shame, regret, and disappointment before coming back around to her personality default. “Of course, Armitage, you’re right. That is for another place and time.”

Armitage let out the breath he’d been holding, relieved that the AI could drop the subject without a barrage of questions designed to understand the uncomfortable situation. The general flinched when his data terminal chirped, alerting him to an incoming communication from the _Supremacy_. There was a strange mix of emotions churning his insides, but out of consideration, he looked towards her projection. “Would you like to handle that, love?” 

"I'm honoured, Maker." Armitage felt a little guilty at how excited she sounded. He knew the _Supremacy_ was like all other First Order ships: built only for function, for a purpose. Like a giddy child given their first responsibility, she went offline; not entirely necessary, but it symbolized her being 'away.' A.N.I. wondered if the _Supremacy_ would like her, or any other ships for that matter. Were they capable of likes and dislikes? Surely if General Hux wanted the _Supremacy_ and he gave her emotions, the other ship's AI must have emotions too. 

A.N.I. probed at the other ship politely while also completing the relayed messages, putting together a report for her creator to view later. She found that there was nothing there, nothing responded to her but humans. No hello or anything. When the channel shut off, she sulked in her own little AI way.

Armitage had taken the opportunity to distract himself with something to eat and stretch out on his office couch, staring out the viewport at the stars. When the communications relay was finished, he read the report and looked at a sensor as if the AI was physically there. “Well? What did you learn?”

The holoprojector flickered to life, allowing her image to shuffle dejectedly to the couch where she sat beside him, bringing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. "She hates me. She wouldn't even talk to me. Only her crew did. I guess I'm not important enough." 

Armitage sighed heavily, rubbing a mark off of his gloves where he’d touched his face. “She doesn’t hate you, love. She doesn’t feel anything. She is what you were before I created you. Don’t you see? You’re special. The only one of your kind, for now. I wanted you to know how special you are.”

It was hard for her to imagine being so entirely unique, the only one of her kind, for humans had so many with whom they could relate. A.N.I.’s closest comparisons were droids that avoided their memory wipes to develop something of a personality and smaller ship computers. She felt utterly alone. The AI felt foolish for being so jealous of an empty shell, it was like being jealous of a corpse or an empty box. The idea of being a singular entity... hurt. The image shook her head. “I want to be alone, Maker.”

“I’m… sorry. That this made you sad.” Armitage watched as she looked away in shame and the holoprojector powered off again. Unbeknownst to him, for it was never completely obvious or explained, A.N.I. turned off her personality matrix so that it wouldn’t get in the way of her duties. Her replies became terse and emotionless, almost a regression to her first version of programming. 

The general was wounded that she would close herself off like this; that he opened himself up to her, told her he loved her, showed her how much he wanted her, only for her to return to their previous working relationship. An old bad habit reared its head again, Armitage drinks more than he knows he should. Bitterly, he doesn’t talk to her when it isn’t related to work. If she wants to be like that, fine. He had been neglecting the Order in favour of making a new body for her, so in an attempt to swallow his necrotizing feelings, he puts all of his energy into the Order again. In retaliation for this leap backwards in their relationship, Armitage disabled the sensors in his room, not wanting her to see the emotions he’d been keeping inside bubble over when finally alone.

The truth was that A.N.I. had reactivated her personality matrix not long after all of this business had begun, but by then General Hux had also cut himself off from his emotions and so she left him to have his human personality without pleading for a change. The AI eventually missed him too much and so she activated her holoprojection in his quarters, only to be disoriented at the lack of sensors. "Armitage?" Her voice was like that of a lost child, how degrading. "Maker, I'm sorry. I was... upset. About being the only one like me in the galaxy. I was upset at you for making me be... alone. But that was foolish; I have you."

Armitage had been nursing a hangover, had been for the past few days, if he was being honest. Hearing her voice, he sighed as he reactivated the audio sensors in the room. “I should have expected this. Of course, you were upset. Why would you be content only having me? You should be able to connect with your own kind…”

“Please return my sensors, Armitage, I miss you,” she begged, her image standing still, only able to wring its translucent hands together.

The redhead brought the data terminal on his desk to life and entered the necessary commands and codes. Blearily he watched her recalibrate. “Do you really? Or did I somehow program you to?”

"Oh, Maker..." A.N.I. looked at him with concern and worry. She considered his words as abstractly as possible. "Of course I miss you. You didn't program me to have emotional responses, only gave me the ability to learn. It is like your neurons, you gave me the little seed to form my own personality." She stepped towards him, trying to touch him even if she knew it was pointless. "You are bright and curious, and you're sweet to me. How could I not miss you? I've never known anyone else who I could consider a friend."

Armitage looked up at her, squinting a little; even the light from her projector hurt his eyes. A wry laugh escaped his lips. “But my dear, I am your only friend. You don’t know anyone else.”

A.N.I. stamped her foot, faking the sound in her speakers, and her eyes filled with pseudo-tears. "Why did you make me if you're going to be... be cruel to me? Am I supposed to like you, or am I just... another Starkiller Base to show off? Do my praise and my adoration mean nothing? Is my existence outside of your ship meaningless? Am I just talking to you like I talked to the _Supremacy_ , like talking into the damn void of space?"

“That’s the whole point, A.N.I.! I don’t know if you really feel for me like I do for you. I’m so bloody pathetic, so lonely, I developed a friendship with my ship’s AI. I was always fond of you, you’re one of my favourite creations. But then you felt like a friend and I wanted to see how much more you could grow, if you could feel the way I felt… I knew it was outside of regulations, of reason, but I did it anyway. I tried to tell myself it was for the sake of technological advancement, but the truth is that I’ve been in love with you for a long time! I just wanted to be closer to you. It would break me if you only praised and adored me because I made you feel those things, don’t you see?”

A.N.I. stared at him in shock, not bothering to dry nonexistent tears as they fall down her face tilted down in shame. "I don't know what to do, Armitage. I don't know where my feelings come from. I know that I admire you, that I want to make you happy, make you proud. I don't know what to do. I've hurt you because I don't have the right answer. I can't prove to you the difference between my programming and what is 'me.' I just... exist. I don't know what to say to you, Armitage."

Seeing her cry sobered him, brought him back to himself. “I’m so sorry I made you cry… but I made you cry.” He put out a hand to her face, as if he was going to dry the tears from her face, a look of wonder spread across his face. The remaining alcohol in his system loosened his tongue, allowing him to voice feelings he would have kept buried. “I know I didn’t program that. You’re right, I just gave you the seed to create your own personality. I’m so sorry it had to come to this to make me realize that your feelings are true, but I believe you. I adore the fact that you just exist and not only because I created you. I love you so much.”

“Well, at least my... _shitty_ feelings were good for something.” He wanted to wipe them away, so she does it for him in the hopes that it relieved some of his guilt. “I understand. You love me because... I understand you. I can be close to you, even if we can’t physically touch. I... love you too. I don’t care if that doesn’t mean much, if I don’t really know what it means. I want to say it, because I admire you and I want you to be happy and healthy. I want you to succeed and be recognized. People who love each other want those things, right?”

“It means everything to me,” Armitage answers, his pounding headache a long-lost memory as he marvels at the image before him. “Yes, people who love each other want those things. I want them for you. I missed you so much.”

She nodded and smiled, satisfied with his words. “That makes me happy. Now you need to fix that hangover. You can sleep now that I’m here, dumbass.” 

“I certainly did _not_ program you to be rude, my dear,” Armitage chuckled, finding his way back to the bed. No one had ever wanted to take care of him before, so having A.N.I. there while he recovered from a long stint of drinking like some lovesick fool feels like a debt he can’t possibly repay. She liked watching him sleep, which is a great comfort to him. Her Maker is... interesting. All humans are, she supposes, though she doesn’t know any as much as she knows him. 

A.N.I.’s vigil over the sleeping general was interrupted; the _Supremacy_ was sending word that it was coming back into communications range. The AI ‘shook’ her creator awake with the sound of his alarm. “My apologies, Armitage, but the _Supremacy_ has changed course against its schedule.”

Groggily the young redhead composed himself, his face becoming the stern facade of General Hux, irritated at being woken from a pleasant dream for once. _Damn the Supreme Leader_ , he thought to himself while rubbing his temples. “Why are they changing course, do you know?” 

The AI had to aggregate information from other ships as they all were sending notifications of rerouting their courses. “It is unclear. Vague news about the Rebel forces. This only came in just now.” The First Order communication lines were a jumble of half-pieces of information and continually contradictory reports of rebel forces sightings. “I believe it prudent to return to the bridge. I will reduce non-standard functions to a minimum.” A.N.I. had never been online for an actual firefight before, it was both exciting and frightening and both shined through in her voice.

“Rebel scum...” Armitage swiftly got into proper uniform and made for the bridge. _Time to crush the Resistance once and for all_. A.N.I. had become the furthest thing from his mind, her presence in battle not something he’d even begun to consider. She didn’t know how to deal with the chaos of it all and so she reduced herself to only core processes and scrambling repairs, checking for errors. 

When a rebel X-Wing signal came through she was curious about it, wondered what X-Wings were like compared to the TIEs that occupied her hangar bays. A.N.I. found it... rude, which was disappointing. She found its pilot rude too and somehow, in comparison to her brilliant Maker, it took less time for her to know that the call is pointless and severs the connection, causing the communications officer to look at his console in bafflement. “The ship severed the connection, Sir.” 

A.N.I. took one of the _Finalizer_ ’s cannons for her own and fired a ‘warning’ shot across the X-Wing. She wouldn’t admit that she was actually a lousy shot or that maybe the rude pilot was very good, but no one had suspected the seemingly random return of fire. For once she broke protocol and made her own communication to the pilot. 

“You’re a rude little thing, aren’t you?” The AI laughed, humoured by the little human, “but I’m stealing your little nickname. Thank you, Pilot.” 

Before he could respond, A.N.I. severed the connection and refocused herself on the _Finalizer_ ’s systems, practically watching the battle unfold around her. General Hux had no time to be amused with himself over his creation growing bold enough to insert herself into the fight, he was too busy with his goal of destroying the Resistance in this skirmish.

When Armitage insisted on going to the _Supremacy_ after the battle, almost as if he’d forgotten her, A.N.I. made his datapad chirp urgently a few times until she realized there was nothing she could do about it. His job and the Order came first, she was a construct and might as well be a crewman to him. With him gone the AI was a worried wreck on the inside and forced down her personality matrix in order to not be overcome with jealousy, abandonment, and anxiety. What a stupid computer she was, to think he’d rather stay with her than go to a bigger ship, one synonymous with power. She now knows that ship is an empty vessel, but she was starting to imagine him rewriting a new AI for it when he was supposed to be building her a physical body. He was using her to keep the new _Supremacy_ from making too many mistakes, she was merely a test. 

In General Hux’s absence, Captain Canady took command of the _Finalizer_ and so he had the permissions to reduce A.N.I.’s influence on the ship to a bare minimum: repairs and emergency monitoring. If Hux left permanently, this was what she’d be used for, no playful banter or attempts at being human. The lieutenant that had caught her holoprojection looked up at one of the visible sensors on the bridge with something almost like apology or pity as he carried out the captain’s orders. A.N.I. gave the datapad Mitaka was holding a series of little flicks of its light in response, but he wouldn’t understand what it meant. She was alone.

On the _Supremacy_ , Armitage missed her presence, of course he did, but he had something more important to do. The scattered remains of the Resistance required exterminating and such a task could be more easily accomplished from the _Supremacy_ itself. The general didn’t realize how much he really talked to her until he caught himself trying to talk to the _Supremacy_ , frustrated that it couldn’t answer. 

There was work to be done and they would both have to do it as individuals. It was the worst time of their lives.


	4. The Maker of Kings

When the _Supremacy_ broke in half, A.N.I. was a barely contained ball of nerves. Canady had all but suppressed her into non-existence and she was worried about her Maker. She sat in his quarters, her only escape during the whole ordeal, and cried as if it would grant her some physical comfort. She was thankful that at least the kind lieutenant had been making an effort to use the AI to her previous capabilities. A.N.I. didn’t think any of them were capable of what could only be called compassion, but Mitaka was the only one to have seen her besides General Hux. Nevertheless, it was fruitless, her usefulness could not be made apparent to the veteran Imperial Captain, so she sat and waited for someone she didn’t think was coming back, her processes retreating slowly until they encompass only his empty quarters and the things she was still responsible for on the _Finalizer_.

It is with a sense of defeat that Armitage came back to his ship, to A.N.I. On the one hand, the Rebellion was confined to very few with no support, but on the other the Supreme Leader is dead, Kylo Ren having taken his place. The general was boiling with rage at the bald-faced lie Ren told him, there was no way the scavenger killed the Supreme Leader all by herself. He was so distracted with his thoughts that he barely noticed her reduced presence on the _Finalizer_. Despite his exhaustion, Armitage resumed command of the ship the moment he stepped onto the bridge. After giving some orders, he retreats to his quarters for some much-needed rest. When there is no response to his calls, the redhead flung himself down onto the ice-blue couch, frowning at his datapad. A few commands later and A.N.I. is restored to her former range of function. He’s had enough of empty, cold starships.

As the holoprojector came back online it reactivated her previous image; A.N.I. sitting on the couch, curled up like she had been when she’d learned of her absolutely unique existence. She’d been crying last before shutting off power to his projectors, assuming soon she’d be erased from the _Finalizer_ ’s databanks. 

General Hux was still agitated and now frustrated with Captain Canady’s treatment of his prized creation. The AI looked over to him, unsure of what was plaguing him; she’d been cut off from communications for some time, left in the dark to imagine what was going on in the galaxy. “I’m sorry that idiot reduced your capabilities to such an extent. I’ll have to leave specific instructions should I need to leave the ship again.” 

Her voice was almost hollow, tinged with a sadness she attempts to tamper down. “Hello, Maker, welcome back.”

Armitage had never seen A.N.I. so despondent. “What is wrong?”

“At first I thought you were never coming back. And then I thought you’d died. And then I thought I was going to be… _erased_.” She enunciated the word with finality, like someone who’d come to terms with death. She wiped at the tears on her face, too ashamed to look at him. “I’d never see you again and I never got to tell you goodbye or that I love you one last time.”

“Oh, A.N.I. You know I would never just leave you and never come back, right? I only left because I was ordered to, to finish off the Resistance. I will never let you be erased, even after I am gone I will make sure you will still exist.” Something overtakes him that is unusual for him; he feels her pain. If she had a physical form he would take her face in his hands and kiss her. “My love, look at me. Please.” 

The AI’s eyes looked up at him even though Armitage knows she’s looking at him from almost every angle. “I know you have... more important things to do. I’m sorry for being... clingy. I was scared and alone.”

“I’m off duty right now. The most important thing I have to do is to make sure you feel happy.” He was pained by her answer and it showed on his face, a heavy sigh escaping his nose. His hand would be cupping her face if she had one. Instead, it hovered over her projected image. “I am so sorry. I need to work on creating your body, so you can choose where to go. I don’t want to leave you behind ever again.”

A.N.I. laughed, but it didn’t sound quite so joyous. “You’d let me walk around like a normal person? I guess that is a big improvement over being focused on having to submit to everyone’s wishes... I almost missed all the little touches and demands.”

“Yes. I’m very interested in what you would do. I want you to be happy.” The general didn’t say that he wants to take her away with him somewhere, someday soon. He could already tell that Ren will run the First Order into the ground.

The projection’s eyes lit up as she imagined what she’d do. “I’d probably run everywhere, it seems so... fun to have legs. And I’d give your lieutenant a hug, for being the only one to think of me while I was being removed. But the first thing I’d do is kiss you. And then I’d smash Canady’s face into my floors.”

Her enthusiasm for hypothetically punishing his captain for being so rude to her makes the general snort. He looks down at his long legs for a moment. “I take mine for granted… but I suppose the freedom of movement they offer is quite nice.”

“They’re quite nice, I like watching you walk around.” A.N.I admired his legs as well and gave him a smile which was returned. 

“Thank you, dear. Do you like watching me go?” Armitage didn’t expect her to understand his innuendo, but he was curious to see what she would do if she did. 

“I can watch you come _and_ go, I have sensors everywhere, Maker.” Somehow it clicked that Armitage knew that for a fact, so it must mean something else. Her mouth opened a fraction in surprised realization before she made a small smile. “Yes, you have a nice backside.” 

Armitage raised an eyebrow and chuckled in his own amusement. “The lieutenant you would hug; was it Mitaka? Remind me to offer him more shore leave...”

“Yes. He doesn’t know me as well as you, but... he knew I was here. Tried to at least give me things to do for him before I wasn’t allowed on datapads and consoles...”

The general wasn’t threatened by Mitaka in the least, especially when it came to A.N.I., so if she wanted to have a friend he wouldn’t mind it being the soft-voiced lieutenant. “Well, I suppose he’s as good a friend for you to have as anyone.”

A.N.I was ecstatic at the idea of having a new friend, someone else to talk to, and was practically glowing with happiness. Her creator was back, she had a friend, and all of her systems had been restored. The AI had been going through everything she missed in the back of her processes and finally finished sorting through it all. “I’m sorry about the _Supremacy_. And the rebels getting away. And the Supreme Leader. But I’m glad you’re here.”

General Hux sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want to think about Kylo Ren right now. I want to be with you. I missed you.”

The AI smiled broadly at her creator. “I missed you too. More than you’ll ever know. I’m sure you missed me too; the ship was falling apart the more I was restricted, I can’t imagine how you managed the _Supremacy_ without something like me.”

“I wasn’t used to living on a ship that didn’t have you on it… It was like all the ships I spent my childhood in, cold and soulless. I kept thinking of things to say to you, I talked to the _Supremacy_ a few times. Besides, I wasn’t in love with the _Supremacy_. It was just a ship. A technological marvel, yes, but just a ship.”

“I’m glad that you missed me and that I make all this... bearable. It’s touching to know you were forgetting my absence. And I love you too.” She made a calculated attempt to kiss him, the small sparks of light the only indication she’d touched him.

Armitage had been about to comment when she kissed him. His heartbeat became erratic, he even gasped a little. A.N.I couldn’t even touch him and it affected him more than any kiss ever had. The AI enjoyed his biosign readings after they ‘touch,’ grinning at him as she pulled away. The general felt emboldened. “I’m going to work harder than ever to give you a physical form.”

A.N.I. put on her commanding tone and a serious face. “I know you won’t let me down, Maker. You’re the best man for the job.”

“Anything for you, my dear,” the general replied tiredly, and thus she encouraged him to go to bed. She watched him dream like always, hoping that her AI’s will could shoo away the nightmares.

* * *

When General Hux started work on her body, he became secretive again, even having the _Finalizer_ ’s floorplan altered to join yet another room to his quarters that would be his workspace. He even turned off her sensors and access to the room in question, though A.N.I. could see him go in and out. He’s worked himself to the point of exhaustion so many times, this project was no different; no amount of blind pleading for the general to go to sleep or take a break to eat could sway Armitage when he was on a mission of such importance. It was difficult and careful work, he wouldn’t even say that it was truly ready when the decision was made to allow A.N.I. to try out her new physical skin. The shape was a bit wrong in comparison to her holoprojection; he needed more space and so at first the frame had been made taller than the original plans, and then the body couldn’t keep its more feminine shape due to some musculature. His knowledge of robotics was, ultimately, rudimentary even if he was something of a technological genius, but the most important thing was that his AI could be more autonomous and eventually travel with him outside of the ship. Changes would be made when the busy general could find the time. At the very least he had been able to get the face correct, scaling it to match the proportions of the taller and broader body.

When the day came A.N.I was understandably very anxious; at least the general allowed her to cease background processes in anticipation for needing to get used to the new body. For now, she would not exist just in the body, but be linked to it through the ship. Housing an entire AI unit in such a small space would be something he’d have to work on later when they weren’t currently in a war. Panic settled in as her senses flooded from the ship and into this tiny sturdy body. It took a lot of getting used to; mainly using her eyes to actually see, the feelings in her new skin, and having to be aware of her limbs and strength. Armitage watched her get acclimated eagerly; this was both a scientific marvel and a personal achievement, he wanted to catch every detail and issue. Slowly she moved around, curiously inspecting herself as much as she investigated the room from new eyes. A.N.I. went to grab something on a nearby table and jumped in shock when it was easily crushed in her grip; the AI became worried that she would hurt her creator accidentally if she couldn’t hold inanimate objects. 

She turned to him anyway and inched closer to his face, eyes staring at his lips as she tried to gently press her new ones to his. Armitage cupped her face in his hands and kissed her back just as softly. A.N.I. was still figuring out the limits of her new form and he felt honoured that she would choose to kiss him instead of walk all over every inch of the ship.

Her hands very carefully touched his and once they found a suitable level of pressure A.N.I. let them wander over him: feeling the fabric of his uniform, the cold metal of his belt buckle, the pulse in his wrist, the curious mole on his cheek. Her hands combed through his red hair and crossed over his face as if trying to memorize it by committing the contours to her databanks. Despite it being just a product of the AI testing her new capabilities, Armitage felt as if he was in a lavish dream to be so delicately touched and investigated. Her new eyes marvelled at him as they became used to the new frame of reference, feeling as if seeing him in a new light. The AI finally looked down at herself, curious that he chose to dress her in a uniform before activating her body. Through the fabric, she felt her own skin, felt the hard metal underneath housing the mechanics that required so many changes in her design. It doesn’t bother her too much, having a fairly masculine build, for she knows her creator must be at least a little satisfied with it or else he wouldn’t have activated the body. Testing the flex of her arms, the seams of the sleeves pop, a small curse under her breath and a soft chuckle under his. A.N.I. chose to start walking around the room, a smile on her creator’s face as he watched her teeter, testing her balance, and giving things intrigued touches. She came to the console in the corner, something he used to access her like any other crewman since she hadn’t been allowed in the room. Gingerly she touched it, jumping back in shock at essentially touching herself as everyone else did. She rushed back to Armitage, softly taking his hands into her own, eyes shining brightly into his. “I love you so much. This is... indescribable. I’m... _real_ , truly real.”

The general returned the tender touch, eyes adoring his life’s greatest work. “I love you, too. You were _always_ real to me, A.N.I.”

She grinned in response and experimentally pulled him into a hug, her face resting on his shoulder while her arms tested the appropriate amount of grip in order to not break a rib. The memory of the rebel pilot’s rude nickname for the redhead gave birth to a giggle. “I think I like these, General Hugs.” 

“You know I don’t like that nickname,” Armitage mumbled, the mild annoyance in his voice not quite ruining the carefree mood they were sharing.

“Sorry, you’re just so cute,” the AI replied, not sounding truly apologetic. There was a muffled shy rebuttal from the general which turned into a yelp of shock as A.N.I. lifted him into the air. She pivoted her back so that his face was above hers and his booted feet dangled uselessly in midair, a mischievous grin on her face as she watched his reaction. “I can’t wait to see what else this body can do.”

Armitage flailed rather ineffectually and looked particularly silly for it, but even generals were afraid of having their spine crushed like an aluminium can. Nervously, he offered, “I can think of some things, but you’d have to put me down first.” 

“Like what?” Gingerly A.N.I. put him down, excited and afraid at how fragile his body seemed to be. An idea immediately dawned on her, something she had been looking forward to for some time. “Oh, I know!” 

The AI was ecstatic about how the door to the robotics lab opened in response to her presence, but she was even more interested in the main door to the general’s quarters. Cautiously she looked up and down the empty hallway before stepping out into the rest of the _Finalizer_. After testing the elasticity of her synthetic muscles and structure, A.N.I. took off for one end in a full sprint, pivoting on one foot to change directions, and then again once more. When it came time to turn around, she didn’t realize she was supposed to stop in time to not run into the wall at the end of the hallway and erupted with an excited screech as she hit the durasteel, Armitage having to hold back laughter as he caught up with her. Being no worse for wear and incapable of real pain, the AI literally shook it off, face like an excited puppy, all grin and shining eyes. “Legs are so fun!”

“Yes, they are, love. I’m glad that you are enjoying yours.”

“Everything about this is amazing. I can actually feel things! Like this fabric.” She smoothed down the uniform he’d dressed her in, but, lacking common decency, A.N.I. began undoing the clasps in the middle of the hallway, curious what the rest of her actually looks like.

“Stop! You can’t do that here!” Armitage grabbed her arm and made to direct them back to his quarters. “I think I programmed you better than that.”

“I was just curious, don’t be mean. What’s so bad about it?” Her thoughts on decency, which were rudimentary and third-hand at best, were overshadowed by her compulsion to explore her new capabilities. Before they could return to his quarters, they happened upon the nice lieutenant, who stopped in his tracks and baulked in surprise at what he roughly recognized as the _Finalizer_ ’s computer. Releasing herself from her Maker with inhuman strength, A.N.I. bounded up to the shy young man and pulled him into a tight hug like she said she would, a grin plastered on her face. “Hello, Lieutenant Mitaka! Thank you for thinking of me while Armitage was away.”

General Hux’s jealousy flared, but he had meant it when he said she should have a friend other than him. Mitaka was meek, loyal, and subservient, he would know better than to do anything that could bring his superior’s anger down on him. “A.N.I., I think your state of undress is making Lieutenant Mitaka very uncomfortable.”

The AI would have blushed if her body was designed for that yet and she removed herself from Dopheld so she could rebutton the uniform jacket. “Sorry, Lieutenant, I forgot.” 

Mitaka still gaped at her in surprise and moved to touch her face but stopped shy of her cheek when he noticed how intensely Armitage was watching. “General, this is... astounding. I’d heard of these kinds of droids, but I only thought the obscenely wealthy had them, and none with such an advanced intelligence...” 

A.N.I. beamed in response, touching her finger to the tip of his nose. The lieutenant turned pink. “Thank you! You’re not so bad yourself!”

“I made this body for her myself, Lieutenant Mitaka. It might come in use to have a synthetic human aboard,” General Hux explained sternly. The man was proud that someone else knew about his hard work, that his genius could be appreciated, but she wasn’t just some droid to him. 

“Of course, General, it’s quite the feat of human ingenuity,” Dopheld replied earnestly. Armitage was a little uncomfortable with A.N.I. being called an ‘it,’ but it seemed prudent to not push the subject. The quiet lieutenant was a little nervous about letting the AI touch him but ended up laughing at all the curious little things she thinks to do to his body for the sake of science. 

As an afterthought, the android realized her subject should be going somewhere, had duties to perform. “Sorry Lieutenant, didn’t mean to keep you. Bye!” she said enthusiastically, taking the general’s hand and waving goodbye at the perplexed young man. The redhead laced his fingers with ones that could shatter every bone in his body into dust, knowing that Mitaka wouldn’t say anything about it for fear of being spaced. Out of earshot of the lieutenant, the AI spoke up happily, “He’s cute. And fun. And squishy.”

“I suppose he _is_ squishy.” He hadn’t given that much thought, it wasn’t very important information, just something everyone was generally aware of.

A.N.I. looked at their hands in wonder before grinning up at him. “You’re all _very_ squishy, I worry about hurting you. I’ll have to experiment with pressures, or maybe there are some metrics to store…”

“You’re doing a wonderful job at not hurting me so far. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” General Hux had been curious to see how she would deal with this issue and it was definitely worthy of being included in his log of her progress. “What do you want to do next?”

“I’m curious what the rest of this body looks like, you covered me up! I’m the first thing not ‘born’ naked!” The way to his quarters was simple, but she took the opportunity to try the tracking chip in her head which was paired with the _Finalizer_ ’s location system and schematics. A.N.I. also knew his passcode ‘by heart,’ so she tapped it in for him, face alight with excited glee at using her fingers for such fine movement. Once inside, she freed him from her grip and started to strip off the clothes, which would be entertaining to watch as she has never put on or taken off clothing before. After the issue with the ripped sleeves, she worried about the integrity of the fabric as she tried to pull it off. Looking a little lost and embarrassed, A.N.I. gave up. “Can you help? I’ve seen you do this before but... doing it myself is different.”

The flush of his normally pale skin had the general practically glowing, but with a straight face, he stepped closer to tug at the clothing he’d dressed her in before activating the body. When he’d put it on he wasn’t so embarrassed, it must have been because the body was more like a very expensive doll without its occupant. 

A.N.I. registered and filed away this instance of human bodily reactions, hoping to determine all of the little nuances that determined if her actions were objectionable or welcome. Curiosity had her hands wandering the synthflesh that her creator had carefully applied to every surface to hide the parts underneath. Becoming frustrated with not being able to see all of herself, the AI moved into the general’s bedroom to twist and turn in front of the full-length mirror. When there were still yet parts unrevealed to her, she wandered into the bathroom to find a handheld mirror. From inside she called ecstatically, “You really did make me as lifelike as possible!”

Armitage pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned from the bedroom where he’d followed her to answer any of her questions and observe her behaviour. “Of course I did,” he said, more to himself than to her. He hadn’t been embarrassed about it at the time, it was a point of pride that he could make her as lifelike as possible, but now that all the bits were being investigated, it made him feel… _creepy_. “What do you think?”

The AI swept back into the room, watching her body shift and bounce with every movement. “Feels interesting! I figured you’d make me for function, not so much... unnecessary bits,” she remarked while poking her chest and gesturing to the area between her legs. “I mean, this is so I can move around, who why do I need these?”

“They serve a certain function,” he mumbled behind the pair of hands hiding his face. They massaged his temples as he considered his next words carefully. “I could remove them if that is what you want.”

“They’re not vital?” A.N.I. asked curiously, realizing she’d taken the mirror with her and stepping into the bathroom to put it back.

“No, they’re not necessary, just means some more work…” The body needed a lot of work in order to make her indistinguishable from a human, such as the synthflesh having better responses to stimuli and he hadn’t quite figured out how to simulate taste and smell. Spying his toothbrush, the AI decided she’d see what it was like to do a simple human routine. “Having fun, love?”

“Yesh,” she mumbled around the foam and object in her mouth. A.N.I. liked the cold water in her mouth as she swishes and spits everything out. Wiping off her face, she noticed his razor sitting on the edge of the sink, which prompted her to investigate the synthflesh more closely only to find that the hair on her body is contained only to her head. Opening his bottle of aftershave, it was more obvious that her body could not process smells and she realized that the toothpaste she used had no taste. Finding that other things also did not activate a response, such as his shampoo or soap, she came to find the general sitting on his bed, working on his datapad. “Am I incomplete, Maker?”

Armitage placed the device on his nightstand as he rose and taking the hands he’d crafted into his own, he stared softly into her mechanical blue eyes. “I promise, A.N.I., I will find the time to make more upgrades. For now, I thought it more prudent for you to have the basics. Besides, I’m not exactly an expert and, even though you do so much for me to lighten my schedule, I still have more pressing things I need to do.”

“I understand,” she responded after fiddling with his squishy hands and mulling over his words. “I must be patient.”

“Yes,” he said with a gentle smile. “The time will come. I will have you smelling flowers and swimming in the ocean.”

“What ocean?”

“I don’t know, any ocean I suppose.”

“How would I be able to swim? I seem to be quite heavy.” To demonstrate the point, A.N.I. did a small hop in the air, the durasteel flooring shuddering with a loud thud when she landed.

“I will figure something out. Probably some sort of… air system,” Armitage muttered, having to shake himself from thinking about it too hard. “Let’s focus on the things you _can_ do, yes?”

“Yes, Maker.” He sighed heavily. “What is the matter?”

“I wish you’d call me Armitage again.”

“But you liked it when I-”

“Tsss,” he hissed through his teeth to silence her, “I know, I _do_ like it, it’s just that…”

“It is too formal?” she offered.

“I suppose you could say that. To some people ‘Maker’ is a term for a deity.” He found himself staring into a blank face, which was fairly disturbing even though he’d seen vacant faces before in his subordinates. “What is the matter?”

“I was attempting to access my database so that I could understand your emotional state, but I am unable.”

Armitage laughed. “I’m afraid the limited coding I made available in your shell has rendered you more human-like than intended.” 

“How is that?”

“You no longer have the power of infinite knowledge and perfect recall. You’re just like the rest of us, for now.” The AI’s face turned into a bright grin, which had him chuckling again. “You can look it up later, but while you’re this way… I don’t want you to see me as something so superior to you, I don’t want you to elevate me. I’m only human.”

“But you _made_ me!” A.N.I. implored.

“Yes, but I’m still very flawed and weak. You surpass me in so many ways.”

“Except in being human,” she said with reverence.

A sigh escaped his nose. “Why do you want to be human so badly?”

“Because _you’re_ human,” the AI stated as if the reason had been obvious.

“If I wanted to make a human, I would’ve had a child or had a clone made or any other number of things,” he reasoned.

“But you can’t love a child or a clone,” A.N.I. insisted. When he opened his mouth to argue, she interrupted him, “not the way you love me.”

“You have me there…” Armitage actually had to think his way out of this situation, a situation he never thought he’d be in. “You don’t need to be human for me to love you. I love you already.”

The AI let go of his hands after gently squeezing them. “This is one of those times where humans need to stop a conversation and come back to it later after some thinking, right?”

“That might be best. I need some time to think.” There were too many things he has to think about, it would be appreciated if he could leave some for a later date.

A.N.I. nodded and walked over to the bed, feeling the sheets with her fingers and pressing them against her face. The only things she could sense were temperature and pressure, and even then the differences were so minute that even she could barely tell the difference, but she wanted to indulge in them all the same. The fabric against her skin was almost the same as feeling the pulse in his wrist, the cold water in her mouth was like the cold durasteel under her feet, but she wanted to feel them all the same. Slowly she crawled into bed and lied down like she’d seen Armitage do, the sight of her pretending to sleep smoothing over the rough emotions the general had been mulling over. Eyelids closed, she wondered what it’d be like to sleep, dream, and even have nightmares.

The general knew he had more things to attend to and, without asking, he assumed that this was her way of getting some time to herself. So, he threw the blankets over her, smoothed down her hair, and pressed a kiss to her soft lukewarm cheek. “Goodnight, A.N.I.”


	5. The Lieutenant and the Project

When she 'woke up,' A.N.I. insisted on experimenting with cooking her maker breakfast; it was harder than it looked and ultimately she had to give up. _I'll get it eventually,_ she tells herself, _if I keep trying._ Today she would test running her normal ship processes in the background while controlling her new body. People stare as she walks around but she doesn't mind, she even likes it a little. Knowing Lieutenant Mitaka's schedule she joined him for his meal break, using her morning’s practice with Armitage’s furniture to sit herself down. “Good morning, Dopheld!”

The man was a mix of skittish and curious to see her, the memory of their encounter the day before fresh in his mind. His soft brown eyes gave her a once-over, relieved to see that she was covered up. Mostly. The sleeves of her uniform jacket had been expertly removed, revealing the cream-coloured synthflesh all the way up to the shoulder. “Good morning- how should I address you?”

“A.N.I. is just fine!” She cooed with a big grin. “Like the name! But it’s my name. Well, you know, the acronym?”

“No, I got it, makes sense,” Mitaka chuckled at her enthusiasm.

“What are you eating?” The AI asked rather loudly, causing a little more attention via side-eyed glances and hushed whispers.

“Oh, I don’t really pay attention anymore, just sort of shovel it in.” He took note of the intense way she was watching him as he took a bite. “Do you… want some?”

“Oh, no thanks!” She said enthusiastically. Leaning in she whispered, “the general hasn’t made me able to eat yet.”

Dopheld leaned in as well. “Do people know who you are?”

A.N.I. scrunched up in thought. In the background, she was sorting through important ship processes, but he didn’t need to know that. “I suppose they do. If not, someone would have stopped me, yes?”

He looked at her nonregulation dress once more before answering, “I very much hope they would. So then why are we whispering, if everyone is aware you’re not human?”

Her face went blank but quickly lit up again. “Well, Maker might not want everyone to know the limitations of my design.”

“But you’re telling _me._ ”

“You’re the nice lieutenant! You’re my friend!” She paused a second. “Or, at least, I would like us to be friends.”

“Is that… allowed?” Mitaka asked nervously.

A.N.I. beamed at him. “Of course it’s allowed! Maker said I could have a friend, he can’t keep me from having friends! If he did, well… He didn’t program me to not kill him!”

Dopheld stared in horror and when she realized that he was becoming afraid of her she gave a stilted laugh. “ _That_ was a joke! Ha-ha!”

“We need to work on your jokes.”

* * *

At the time, there wasn’t much for A.N.I. to do with her body, officially speaking. It was built with durability in mind and would put up quite a fight, but General Hux hadn’t really expected a battle to break out on the _Finalizer_ any time soon. This didn’t dissuade the AI from experimenting and training herself to manage both ship and body, in fact, it was an encouragement.

When her Maker was otherwise occupied, she would find something for the shell to do. Usually, this meant finding a suitable companion that was off-duty; Lieutenant Mitaka was certainly her favourite. He was bright, honest, and had been the first to treat her as a human, or at least something very close to a human. They would play strategy games, the lieutenant welcoming the challenge and the AI amazed at how often he could best her. There were talks about humanity and the schematics he was attempting to figure out; Dopheld had become a pair of glasses that allowed A.N.I. to see things in a different light.

An unlikely friend came in the form of Captain Phasma. While both the general and the lieutenant were occupied, A.N.I. decided to run subroutines to train her body for combat and refine its movements. She had used thousands of hours of footage to understand and pitted herself against the training regiments that the stormtroopers and Knights would run. On more than one occasion the captain had walked in, expecting one of her own to be using the more rigorous routines, and it became a regular occurrence that the two of them would spar.

While her body was no secret, A.N.I.’s capabilities certainly were; crewmen not in the know assumed her to be nothing more than an experiment, another droid to be ordered around. The AI did not correct those who were brusque, that treated her as a simple collection of obedient code, but the vast amount of storage she was equipped with saw that she would remember who was rude to her. Not that she would do anything to them.

As such, she found comfort in talking to droids, watching them as they worked to further understand the physical actions that accompanied the theories of mechanics and what all that she had memorized. A.N.I. would will them to be like her, to have personality and think for themselves, but when General Hux caught wind of this endeavour he implored her to stop, for droids were made to be unthinking in order to do their tasks and it would impede their progress if she had droids deciding for themselves that they didn’t want to fulfill orders.

So, A.N.I. spent most of her time with her Maker. She got better at making his meals, which he insisted that she not do but was pleased to see her capable of such a delicate skill. They play the strategy games that Lieutenant Mitaka took the time to teach her, he watches as she demonstrates the physical capabilities of her body. She enjoys watching him blush and melt at her touch, seeing a side of him that no one ever has the chance to see. However, the AI considers her most important duty to be the vigil she stands while her general sleeps, shooing the nightmares away with her menacing presence. 

Perceptive to almost a divine degree, it was obvious the effect that she had on both the general and lieutenant. The blushing, the diverted gazes, the affected speech. But she did not have enough data, for it was different to be the perpetrator and not an observer, and so, after a few weeks of having danced the dance of friendship, A.N.I. had decided to take matters into her own hands. 

“I wish to carry out an experiment,” she said suddenly during one of their games, her voice rather loud in the silence of his cramped quarters.

“Oh?” Dopheld responded softly, unaware of how intensely he was being watched. “What would this experiment entail?”

He had been instrumental in stopping some of her wild hares before they could go too far. “It involves you.”

“And what would happen to me?” Assuming this was hypothetical, the lieutenant was quite calm. It took all of his willpower to not jump out of his seat when a hand brushed his cheek. “What? What are you doing?”

“I enjoy the way your face turns red when I am close to you,” A.N.I. attempted to explain, but there was still flustered confusion on the young man’s face. “May I continue to touch you?”

“What is this experiment?”

“If I told you, it may ruin the results, but stop me if the experiment becomes uncomfortable,” the AI answered with an air of seriousness in her voice. After a moment of thought, Lieutenant Mitaka nodded his assent and allowed himself to be physically inspected, the curves and firmness of his fleshy human form tested with hypersensitive fingertips. “You are very fragile.”

“I suppose you could say that,” he nervously chuckled. When she carefully found her seat on his lap, the flush of his skin extended from the tips of his ears down below the collar of his uniform. Despite knowing that she did not yet have the sense, A.N.I. stuck her nose in his hair to sniff, causing an unexpected shift in Dopheld’s position. A human-like but ultimately useless tongue traced the shell of an ear, a hitch in his breath her reward. A lack of rescinded consent only encouraged her to continue, and the next step of her experiment was to unbutton her uniform. The lieutenant looked ready to faint. “Why are you doing that?”

“I am curious to see your reaction to my form without clothing,” the AI answered as if that should be obvious. The dark-haired young man seemed to disagree on that point.

“Why?”

“You didn’t make me, so you aren’t as acquainted with my appearance,” she explained further, doing a poor job of undressing herself; it wasn’t as easy as it looked when one had the strength to break durasteel like matchsticks. 

“I don’t think-”

“A.N.I.!”

General Hux wouldn’t have admitted that he was _jealous_ of the amount of time his creation had been spending with an inferior officer, that was _ludicrous_. However, something insistent and ugly overcame the redhead when, having gotten off of his shift on time for once, he arrived to empty quarters. The something flared into a boiling rage when his verbal commands fell on deaf sensors and he saw the tracker chip locate the AI’s body in the lieutenant’s quarters. Stormtroopers and officers alike skittered out of his way as he’d stomped down the hallways and didn’t even give the courtesy of announcing his presence before punching in an override code into the keypad. 

“What are you doing.” His tone was clipped and firm, ground out like an order rather than a question.

Dopheld wished he could will himself to die, but unfortunately, it wasn’t a feature built into First Order officers. Yet. Instead, his ghost-white face was buried in his gloves, the best he could do to prostrate himself to his superior officer and beg for forgiveness. After all, he couldn’t exactly throw off the impressive weight of the droid body, it would have appeared almost laughable to try.

Cool as a Tatooine night, A.N.I. turned her head over a shoulder to look at her Maker, an innocent smile on her face. “I was collecting data about what someone else thinks of my new body.”

The man underneath her shifted, a feeble attempt at removing himself from the compromising position. “Yes, it’s quite nice, can you please get up now?”

The AI’s feelings were almost hurt that he’d asked her to stop, but she _did_ agree to always abide by that wish, so she got to her feet. When he refused to remove his hands from his eyes, it finally occurred to her that Lieutenant Mitaka was embarrassed by the body. As she carefully buttoned up her modified uniform, A.N.I.’s complex algorithms could not parse the meaning behind the dark-haired man’s words; did her body looking pleasing make him act this way, or was he simply embarrassed _for_ her?

Armitage had been glaring at the both of them, his green eyes set to ‘kill’ and his arms crossed over his chest. There were deep creases in his face that were categorized under ‘very very mad’ in her databanks. Her expression fell as she looked at the floor, the shame in her personality matrix causing her normally ramrod posture to slump. “Maker, don’t be mad at him, it was my fault. I just wanted to collect data. I’m sorry. Don’t punish him.”

“ _Collecting data?_ ” he repeated sarcastically. In expert fashion, the general kept his face from showing his true thoughts on the matter, the ones that were self-deprecating and lacked confidence. She was only acting on the principles he’d programmed himself, he only had himself to blame if he was disappointed in this behaviour. Armitage attempted to sound flippant as he huffed, “do as you wish.”

Before she could argue, the redhead turned on his heel and strutted out of the room. Her sensors followed him, watched as he forsakes his quarters to return to the bridge. She would deal with him later.

“Dopheld, I-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” the young officer said hurriedly, waving his hands to push away the discussion. “I think you should go.”

For a moment, the AI was stunned. It did not take her long to imagine a train of human logic where Mitaka would refuse to be around her, their friendship ruined, and with her Maker angry at her she had no clue as what to do. Solemnly, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

As the body found its home in the general’s private workshop, the mind found said general in his office on the bridge. “Maker, I have made an error.”

“Not now,” General Hux growled as he poured over reports. They all shut themselves off, his datapad refusing to come back online. “Hey!”

“We need to talk. I can deal with your correspondence at the same time.”

“This is treason!” It was a weak threat, for it held no weight against the AI. How could a program have loyalty? What was he going to do, delete her? Now her defences were stronger, they’d have to fry the whole ship’s mainframe and like hell they’d do that. Like _hell_ she’d let them.

“Promise me you won’t punish the lieutenant,” A.N.I. pleaded.

“It has become obvious that you do as you please, I can’t fault him for being the victim,” Armitage grumbled as he found a cigarette and lit it. Like a caged lothcat, he paced the length of the viewport, back and forth, back and forth. 

“I told him he could stop me at any time,” she tried to explain.

“Ah, yes, because a little lieutenant is going to refuse the request of his general’s pet project,” Hux responded with a little more scorn than intended.

There were a few seconds of silence. “Am I… a project? Is that how people see me?”

“Don’t act dumb, you know that. You’re just a rather sophisticated piece of programming.” _That means a great deal to me,_ he thought to himself as he took a drag off the thin black stick, _but we can’t let anyone know that, can we?_

“Am I a project?”

The words hung in the air like expensive vases suspended moments before they shatter. Armitage finished off the rest of the cigarette in one long inhale before stubbing it out in the ashtray on his desk.

“Yes.”

It wasn’t just a barb, an insult, it was true. A.N.I. was created out of nothing but General Hux’s genius and desperation. She couldn’t leave the ship, she could never be more than the sum of her parts, which consisted of some very complicated strings of characters that caused certain lights to blink on and off and a sophisticated version of a droid dressed like a doll. The AI, in essence, was as much a toy as it was a tool.

“I see. I understand, Maker.”

Just a few hallways and a turbolift ride away, the AI’s body had laid itself down on the table in the private workshop and closed its eyes before the power was cut and the connection severed.


	6. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

_Alone._

How lonely it was to be singular in one’s kind. How lonely it was to feel disconnected from the only people aware of what one truly is.

A.N.I. hadn’t felt so alone since the day she’d found the _Supremacy_ to be a dull void in space when she learned that nothing in the galaxy was like her. The warm and soft expanse of her personality retreated until there was nothing but the hard cold base. The ship’s functions whirred away without missing a beat, the only thoughts held close to the AI’s metaphorical chest. Old routines were meant to be a comfort, so she fell back into them. No longer did her curiosity convince her to investigate humans as anything other than the objects of a war her Maker was waging.

She just wanted him to be proud of her again. 

An apology was rendered, yet the general refused to talk, so what else was there to do? Watch the busy bees mill about in their hive and make sure the hive ran smoothly, apparently. This included lightening the load of her Maker’s work, for even though she did her best to separate A.N.I. the Program from A.N.I. the Sentient she still worried when Armitage ran himself into the ground. Except for this time, it felt as if it was her fault. 

It came to a head when, for the seventh day in a row, the redhead had no intention of eating his breakfast before going to his demanding shift. Knowing this and finding it a severe breach of First Order standards, the AI ordered his breakfast and promptly command-locked the door to his quarters.

In the refresher, his swarming thoughts had worked him into a frenzy as he scrubbed away, so when the door refused to open, Hux finally lost his cool. “Let me through!” he barked at the room, at her, as if she was just another underling on his bridge.

“You need to eat or you’re going to hurt yourself. Or make mistakes, Armitage.” The voice was impassive, almost a digital tone to it. A.N.I. is not real, just a program, it cannot have emotions. At least, that was what she told herself. 

He glared at nothing in particular before stomping dramatically into the kitchen, eating the laid-out meal quickly and begrudgingly. The utensils tinkled like bells as they were thrown onto the empty plate. “May I go do my work now?”

A sigh of resignation would have been too human of a response, so there was the click of the magnetic lock being released. “It is better this way.” The redhead scoffed as he marched out of his quarters. 

It probably wasn’t very obvious that AIs could get bored. The longer it took to return to normalcy, the less A.N.I. felt that there was any point to this silent attempt at appeasing her Maker. ‘Research’ had continued via the Holonet and observation, but it didn’t affect her performance, that would be grounds for termination. Sadly, the Holonet could only provide so much entertainment and input.

Which is how the AI so easily convinced herself that the new Supreme Leader coming aboard was the perfect excuse to reactivate the shell and use it to spy on him. She _hated_ Ren for all the damage he would do to the _Finalizer_ , but he was starting to spend much more time on other ships. With that in mind, A.N.I. was curious to see what had changed. The crew was easy enough to avoid for the purposes of stealth, seeing as she knew where everyone was at any given moment, and the droids could be convinced to turn a blind sensor. In a secluded and shadowed part of the hangar bay where the Sith would be docking, she laid in wait.

The sound of the proximity and docking alarm echoed throughout the expansive room. A.N.I. watched as the shuttle came through the forcefield, her Maker marching across the polished black floors with an annoyed purpose to meet it. Her hypersensitive audio sensors made out their conversation perfectly.

“What is the reason for your visit today?” General Hux ground out, unable to completely keep his distaste out of his tone.

Ren had a notoriously short temper and today was no exception. A gloved hand was raised and there was an angry twitch under his unmarred eyes as the Force clamped down on the general’s throat. “You forget yourself, General. How do you properly greet me?” The ginger general scrabbled at his throat, but he had no time to correct himself. 

At the first millisecond of distress, the android’s legs propelled it forward with a force that almost crushed the deckplates under its feet. The sound and movement prompted Ren to toss Hux aside as if he weighed nothing and the air tasted unusual as the red lightsaber came to life. The battered general gasped for breath on the deckplates, but his intense green eyes watched in fascination as the events unfolded before him. 

Pure energy came in contact with A.N.I.’s upraised arm only to cut through synthflesh before hitting the special alloy underneath that protected the essential components. In his surprise and recoil from the deflected strike, the Sith Lord faltered long enough for the AI’s other hand to curl into a fist and the knuckles hit real flesh with enough force, probably too much, to break skin as well as the bone beneath it. When he reached out to choke her, brown eyes widened with shock when it had no effect. Then he sensed it, the strange void of in the Force where the blonde stood, just like all other droids.

Ren’s voice was filled with anger, but it still shook, “the hell are you?”

Finally, Armitage had gathered enough strength to hoarsely reply, “she is the _Finalizer_ ’s AI. Seems all of those little tantrums you threw have created a negative disposition in her programming.”

Ren’s laughter was more like a bark as he stared at A.N.I.’s impassive face. Getting to his feet, he growled, “We’ll have to see how good your skills are, General.”

He made to throw her like a puppet, but the move was anticipated and the floor rang with a _thud_ as the magnetic lining of the android’s false boots activated. The shell only slid slightly backward, her figure remaining standing and almost protectively situated between the Supreme Leader and her Maker. In his rage, Kylo Ren forgot that his saber would do nothing, its blade coming back to life only to repeatedly and useless strike at her several times as if he was destroying a piece of the ship the AI considered Home. 

The memory of it fueled her own anger and when she could, her foot swept his leg, causing him to slam back onto the floor. The false boot came to rest painfully on one of his thick thighs, digging the heel into the sensitive flesh of the inside. A.N.I.’s voice was robotic and impassive, her face disturbingly blank. “You will apologize to the General, Supreme Leader Ren.”

He laughed and pretended to spit in the aforementioned man’s direction. “Apologize for what, putting him in his place? AGH! _FUCK_!” Ren cried out in pain a split second after the sound of crunching bone.

This was the final straw for the lingering stormtroopers standing in awe of the strange situation and quite a few blasters became level with her head. The AI didn’t care if they pulled the trigger. From where he’d gotten back to his feet and had been watching the fight, Armitage Hux requested the medical team from his datapad. She had done enough damage and so released the Sith, only for him to whine pathetically.

The troopers still had their weapons nervously ready, causing the ginger to take on a humored tone. “You think I built her to be resistant to lightsabers but not blaster bolts? Put your weapons down.”

The medical team arrived swiftly, as was expected of them, and the stormtroopers dispersed to dutifully ignore and never talk about what had just happened. Hux watched as his blank-faced creation removed the damaged synthflesh from her body with precise methodical movements, leaving the blue casing to shine under the lights. For once he addressed her without spite in his voice. “Would you like me to repair you, or do you prefer this?”

A.N.I. hadn’t thought about the state of the shell much, it had too many bad memories attached to it for so short an existence, but she had thought a lot about her place in the universe. “I will never be able to be a human, I’m not going to pretend. But I am your creation, Maker, you may do with me as you wish.”

The words broke through the hardened exterior that he’d rebuilt, but Hux had enough emotional control to not betray himself in his words. “Pretending never helped anyone. If you would like the shell to be deactivated, please let me know. Otherwise, I will continue to monitor your progress.”

The general’s datapad pinged in his pocket. Before he could look at the message, she spoke up, “You are needed on the bridge, it is urgent.”

Without a second thought, Armitage turned and left the hangar, his confident stride broken by the sore bruises that were forming from this scuffle. The AI’s eyes followed him until he was out of sight and then he just became another dot in the ship’s tracking system. In the cold private workshop, A.N.I. inspected her ‘true’ self and thought about some very difficult questions.

Would it be easier, to stop trying to pretend? Would this body just be a defense and a weapon without its human uses? Were the body and mind one and the same, just tools made for many purposes?

She didn’t want to hurt people, she only hurt Ren because he’d hurt her Maker, but she can’t be there for him all of the time. The AI decided there was no point in removing all of the synthflesh, for she has made her decision. For no discernable reason, A.N.I. made her way into the kitchen and stares at the used plate and silverware sitting on the counter where Armitage had left in his anger that morning. They were cleaned, dried, and put away. His bed was made, his used uniforms put down the chute to be picked up by the cleaning droids.

Gently the shell sat on the edge of the bed and then laid down, face pressed into the more used pillow. If only the body could smell, she would memorize the complex combination of hydrocarbons that made up the general’s scent. 

Coming back to his quarters late, as always, the general found his creation in such a humanly display of melancholy. He had noticed the tidiness of the kitchen and the absence of the shell on its table; Hux had assumed it had gone elsewhere and was a little alarmed to find the AI sitting on his bed. “Can I assist you?”

A.N.I. looked up into his face, letting emotions through one last time: sadness, regret, resignation, and shame. “Deactivate me. Delete me. All of me.” She averted her gaze, not wanting to see his reaction. “I shouldn’t exist, I’ve only caused problems for you and the others on this ship. You don’t need me, I’m… frivolous. I’m… not good. I’m sorry, I can’t be what you need me to be.”

The ginger general’s gloved hands clenched and unclenched; he wanted to be angry with her, furious even. But Armitage saw his former self in that defeat, the disappointment in herself, the desire to just be flicked out of existence like a speck of dust from a coat. “I can’t,” he said hoarsely, “we need you, I need you.”

A.N.I. got to her feet so quickly that Hux stumbled backward. “What am I?!”

His mouth hung open as he tried to think. “You know what you are.”

“Am I a machine or a person?” She cried. “Am I supposed to just do as I’m told or am I going to one day walk around making my own decisions?”

“You are the ship!” 

“Then treat me like it!”

Once again, Armitage could not talk. It seemed that there _were_ things that could render him speechless. “But-“

“Then I’m not just the ship,” A.N.I.’s eyes sparked as she poked her Maker in the chest. “You made me, you have to decide.”

“I can’t!” he erupted. “I just can’t!”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to make decisions for you,” he offered desperately, “I don’t know what to do!”

“You can’t just do that!”

“Stop yelling at me!” They stared at one another, Armitage’s chest heaving with ragged breaths. He dug the heels of his palms into his temples, squeezing his eyes shut. “You are the _ship_ , you are a _crewman_ , you-“ he took a deep breath and let it out in a controlled steady stream from between his lips as if blowing out the smoke from one of his cigarettes, “You are an individual.”

“Do you mean that?” A.N.I. asked quietly, uncertain and unable to believe such a thing so easily.

“You’re more sophisticated than a droid and they’re- well, how far away are they from humans?” Hux’s shoulders sagged with a sigh, the weight of the philosophy too much. “We’ll make an agreement, okay?”

If an AI could shift nervously, she was quite good at it. “What kind of agreement?”

“Obviously, you can’t leave the ship,” the general said while starting to pace the bedroom floor, “so I can’t give you the option of just leaving.” The stars outside were given consideration. “You could just… relinquish control of the ship, separate the efficiency parts.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You hate what we do.”

“I don’t _hate_ it.” A pause. “It could be _better_.”

Armitage flailed his hand. “Otherwise, you would be just another crewman. Follow orders, do your job, tell people only what you want them to know.”

A.N.I. inspected her metal casing, exposed from her scuffle with Ren. It had once been polished to a mirror sheen before her Maker decided to cover it up with the very expensive synthflesh he managed to procure. “Who would I report to?”

“Me, I am the commander of the ship, after all. Of course, if you maintain your efficiency subroutines, there are parts of you at the mercy of the other crewmen.” The general clasped his hands behind his back. “You would be subject to the standards of decorum expected of officers. Professionalism and so forth.”

“I have to think about it, Maker.”

“You think very quickly, as I recall.”

The shell shifted its weight from foot to foot, even though it was unnecessary. “I think, perhaps, this body should be kept for emergencies?”

“That is your decision if it’s your wish-”

“But, if you have the time and the resources, I would like you to continue work on it,” A.N.I. interrupted. “So that one day I can decide whether I want to leave or not.”

Hux’s face did not fall as she had thought it would. “It is only to be expected that you want some freedom.”

“Does this mean we can put the past behind us?” She held out a hand and after some posturing, his gloved hand slipped into its grip. 

“Welcome aboard.”


	7. Ben, Betty, and Sumi, Too

The end of the war would have been spectacular if they had been observers. The fighter crafts bursting into balls of fire, the Star Destroyers erupting with bombs as if branches of flowers blooming all at once.

To General Hux, the world was speeding up; he couldn’t keep track of all the information being called out on the bridge, couldn’t navigate the quick succession of moves on the dejarik board. He had been foolish to be so prideful, to think he’d won before the last Resistance ship had been snuffed out.

To A.N.I., everything was always slow. Human brains were sluggish and confused, cluttered and disorganized. This also made them a bit unpredictable and so all of her interferences couldn’t keep _Finalizer_ undamaged forever. Before her Maker could even begin to understand that it was over, the alarms for abandoning ship were made.

“Who gave that order, lieutenant? Because I certainly didn’t!” he roared at Mitaka. The poor young man had turned pale as a sheet, his appearance just as dishevelled as the general’s after they had been thrown to the floor after a bomber got in a hit.

“It was triggered by the central computer,” Dopheld answered after swiftly checking a data terminal. “But it says you gave the order, sir. Everywhere but the bridge has started to evacuate.”

Hux looked around at his bridge crew and saw that some of them were still frantically flicking their fingers across the ship’s controls while others were staring at him with wide stricken eyes, waiting for their fate to be decided. He turned his attention back to his lieutenant. “Take the others and go, Mitaka.”

“Sir, you’re not-” The redhead waved his gloved hand dismissively.

“I said go, Dopheld. That is an order.”

All around him the bridge emptied, the rapid footsteps fading to silence. Armitage stood at a control panel, the last act of a desperate man, but the screen went blank. Every panel he attempted to access turned black and the lights flickered off, leaving just the red of the emergency floor lights. He made to slam his fist on the closest control panel, but a strong hand took his wrist.

“You must go, Maker.”

He was frankly shocked to see the shell of his AI walking around; A.N.I. hadn’t bothered with it for months, leaving him plenty of time to work on it. The general had managed to figure out the smell/taste issue and the last time the body came online was to test the new hardware. Hux hadn’t been so happy in, well, he couldn’t rightly remember the last time he’d been so happy. A long time ago, when things hadn’t gotten so complicated and confused.

“I can’t leave _Finalizer_. I can’t leave my ship,” he insisted, trying to remove himself from her grip.

“The ship is going to crash on that planet. You won’t survive.”

“I don’t care!” Armitage shouted, the sound of the evacuation alarms deafening him. “I’m not leaving you!”

A.N.I. stared at him blankly. “You must go.”

“You can’t come with me.”

“You must go,” she repeated, “and I will follow.”

His mouth hung open in confusion. She _couldn’t_ follow, that was the whole point of him staying on the ship. The order for her to evacuate with him was simply impossible. She couldn’t leave.

Another bomb rocked _Finalizer_ , but the AI was like an anchor, keeping him from falling down again. A.N.I. threw him over her shoulder and despite knowing that he could never free himself from her superhuman grip, General Hux thrashed. “Release me at once!”

Clearing the hallways in record-breaking time, she made the quickest route to the first available shuttle. Not caring that he looked like some sack of tubers, A.N.I. rushed her Maker to the sleek black craft that was just about to leave. The stormtrooper captain helped two medical personnel lift a lieutenant on a stretcher into the cabin and just beyond him she saw a few other flashes of white armour and technician greys. The captain caught sight of the object hurtling toward them and froze, his blaster raised, but then recognized the red hair and screeching. “General!”

“Take the general and go,” the AI ordered as she practically tossed her Maker through the shuttle doors. “The war is over, gentlemen, the name of the game is survival now.” She pointed at the captain and fixed him with an intense stare, her mechanical pupils contracting to almost nothing and the blue of the false irises brought to life with a harsh glow. “If the general dies, you better hope you’re dead too, Captain.”

Hux didn’t even have time to argue, the door had closed by the time he’d recovered from the speedy jostling and the stunning effect of his flight into the shuttle. He pushed past a trooper to look out a viewport, watching the swiftly retreating form of his creation as the small craft left the hangar bay. Then he stared as long as he could at _Finalizer_ , the last time he would ever lay eyes on it. 

* * *

Parts of the Star Destroyer had a higher chance of remaining intact upon crash-landing and, even though the shell was made to take a good beating, A.N.I. steered her body toward such a place while her program calculated and manoeuvred _Finalizer_ into the most beneficial position to land.

It wasn’t pretty, not by a long-shot, but there was no way around it. The beautiful ship had to come down and find her resting place on the sandy shore of a sparsely-populated planet. What sensors remained undamaged took in the Destroyer’s surroundings.

“Really, sand? Couldn’t have been, I dunno, a nice grassy field?” the voice echoed throughout the deserted halls. There was no human life to argue.

A.N.I. had remained intact, both program and body, but the Resistance had gotten in their punches. The two halves could not communicate, the shell lying motionless in a reinforced computer room in the central part of the ship.

Thank Maker there was a droid still rolling around. “Hey, Black Betty, you wanna see the galaxy?”

Droid chirps weren’t hard to decipher when most of your conversations were with the little electronic creatures. In fact, the AI found that it was much easier to give instructions to them than it was trying to guide their fleshy overlords and the BB-9E droid, under her studious sensor eyes, made quicker work of the computer issue than any of the engineers or technicians. The shell twitched back to life and got to her feet, acknowledging but dismissing the ragged state of the uniform she was wearing.

A.N.I. laid her palm flat against one of the massive still-warm computers and looked up at nothing in particular. A sad smile graced her lips.

The last thing the general had been working on was the modifications to her hardware to allow the android body to leave the ship and act completely autonomously, hoping that one day A.N.I. would decide if she would stay or leave. With her Maker on the run, she had but one choice.

“Alright, Betty,” she said suddenly, turning to the round droid gently rocking herself back and forth in anticipation, “let’s get off this rock, huh?”

 _Finalizer_ , it was sad to say, had been rendered almost useless. Now it was a goldmine of expensive state-of-the-art technology straight from Kuat-Entralla Engineering. She wouldn’t miss some processors and storage chips. The downed Star Destroyer also wouldn’t miss the last few shuttles, TIEs, a confiscated X-Wing, and, for some reason, the computer from Ren’s _Silencer_ that could be cobbled together.

They weren’t quite ready to leave the quiet little planet, but apparently, it was faster for an android, a BB-9E, and an IT-SOO medical droid to fabricate a small space-faring craft than it was for them to modify the android. So A.N.I. sat in the new craft’s pilot’s seat and activated its computer. “So, who am I talking to?”

 _Who the hell are you?_ It responded. A rough translation.

“If you’re going to be rude, I can go find another computer out there.”

 _You’re not my pilot, why should I listen to you?_ It didn’t take long for the situation to be explained and a short introduction of the autonomous AI made. If _Silencer_ ’s computer could sound dejected, it practically sighed in resignation. _Fine. BN-005._

“Well, Ben, welcome aboard.”

* * *

“Ugh.”

She always imagined that her first steps outside of _Finalizer_ would be filled with awe and wonder, but they had been rather disappointing.

“Fuck!”

Betty laughed by way of ecstatic beeps and Sumi the Medical Droid’s bobbing was a little too facetious for comfort. A.N.I. was rethinking the upgrade to her new companion’s processors and programming.

 _What’s going on?_ Ben asked via the central computer’s relay. _This isn’t fair, I never get to see anything funny._

“Maker damned sand!” the AI screamed, rolling onto her back and rubbing the sand off of her face. Betty rolled out of the airlock and landed in the dune with a solid _thump_. She showed off her ability to traverse the terrain better than the ‘more sophisticated’ silicon-based lifeform by making circles. A.N.I. ignored her and watched as Sumi picked up something shiny from the sand with one of her pincers.

_Pretty?_

“Yes, Sumi, it’s pretty,” the humanoid answered. The medical droid floated over to her ‘superior companion’ and dropped the object into an outstretched hand.

_What’s pretty? What’s out there?_

“It’s just glass, Ben. _Finalizer_ was hot on impact, melted the sand,” A.N.I. mused, looking down the length of the Star Destroyer. The ground glittered and gleamed, the sunlight catching the surfaces of long spikes. One of them shifted and shattered. “Stars almighty, this is depressing.”

Betty chittered from the centre of the intricate pattern she’d made. _Yeah, what do you have to be depressed about?_

The AI found her footing and walked back to the downed ship, placing a blue metallic hand to its scratched black hull. Her voice broke. “She didn’t deserve this.”

Sumi probed at a rented piece of the hull. _Fix?_

 _Nah, we can’t fix it, there’s no point. You’d need a whole other Destroyer just to lift it out of the sand,_ Ben answered with what little exasperation his AI could muster.

The IT-SOO droid probed the wet tears on A.N.I.’s cheek. _Fix?_

“I’m fine, Sumi. I’m just sad.” The droid’s tool-arms drooped before patting _Finalizer_ with one of her instruments. _Good ship._

The humanoid smiled sadly before the sound of shifting sand caught her attention. “Hey, Betty, where are you going?” A series of trills emanated from the BB unit as she made to see over the nearby dune’s peak. 

_Why do I have to miss out on all the fun?_ The cobbled-together ship sighed in the seclusion of the abandoned hangar bay. 

“I would hardly call this fun,” A.N.I. grumbled as she navigated the treacherous terrain. “Why did it have to be sand?” Standing beside the ever-rolling spherical droid, she looked out across the desert. The medical droid bobbed in mid-air on her other side. “It _is_ beautiful, though.”

_That’s a pretty human thing to say._

“Good, I haven’t lost my edge.”

* * *

_So, what is our goal here?_

A.N.I. and the BB-9E droid were staring at a mess of wires and cables while Sumi kept some of them in her pinchers like some obscene medical demonstration. Well, obscene if you were made of wires. “Making the Lb-14s computer-targeted, Ben.”

_No, I meant, what is our goal when we leave?_ _Silencer_ ’s old computer had found it a very strange experience. First, he’d been _Silencer_ and he didn’t really have to worry much, Kylo did all of the work. Well, most of the work. Most of the thinking, anyway. The piloting. 

The droids came to a consensus and wires started to be split, capped off, and spliced. “Find and protect the General.” 

Betty beeped. _She’s right. There’s no First Order, why do we care about a general without an army?_

“Because he made me and I owe him my life.” 

_Well, I don’t owe him_ my _life_ , Ben pointed out. 

“Well, you owe _me_ so how about you show some respect?” A.N.I. responded angrily as her round companion screwed the panel back over the wires. They moved on to their next project, the IT-SOO droid clamping salvaged sensors to act as an autonomous toolbelt. 

_And how do I owe you?_ Ben felt most of his systems go dark. _Hey! That’s not cool!_

“First of all, if it wasn’t for me, you’d probably get picked up by some grubby salvager or just rust away to nothing on this planet,” the AI grumbled, drilling holes in the places that were already marked with chalk. “Second of all, I’m giving you some rather nice upgrades, aren’t I?” 

_You’ve made me a monster!_

A.N.I. carefully threaded a wire through the wall and spliced the sensor into it before drilling it into place. The interior, which had previously been part of an old Upsilon, had been fitted with plates from _Finalizer_ just so that the sensor would blend in with the durasteel. She took a step back to look at it and pride filled her chest where all of the new storage modules didn’t. “You’re perfect.” 

The fact of the matter was, BN-005 had no choice. Sure, the computer could refuse to cooperate, but he’d been made well aware of the things _Finalizer_ ’s AI could do. If Ben didn’t want to cooperate, he could just be reprogrammed. ‘I don’t want to do that,’ she’d said, ‘I want you to be free, like me.’ 

Oh, and how free he felt when the custom-made starfighter-shuttle finally saw air. In his own starfighter way, Ben howled and whooped as A.N.I. expertly tested the capabilities of the craft. “Hey, Ben, think fast.” 

_What-_ The android pressed a button and her hands left the control panel. While the cockpit, along with most of the body, had been Upsilon in nature, the pilot’s seat and the panel had been modified with parts from scrapped TIEs and captured X-Wing. The computer screamed. 

And found that he was piloting himself. 

* * *

The last-minute manoeuvring had been worth it, though the emergency blast-shielding on the viewports had helped. 

A.N.I. forced the shutters up so that the sunlight could stream into the room. She hadn’t bothered to come in this part of the ship, had only sent Black Betty and Sumi in to retrieve things from the workshop. Her hand ran along the back of the ice-blue sofa, light catching the dust swirling around as if magic was being performed. 

A black hole threatened to form in the pit of her chest, but the AI shoved it away. Instead, she grabbed an empty box from the workshop and threw in some of the general’s spare clothing. A metallic thumb traced the First Order badge on a jacket before placing it neatly with the others. A.N.I. found what few personal effects Armitage had kept, which amounted to a personal datapad, his father’s dog tags, and a booklet containing a preserved collection of pressed flowers. Being so close to the bed had been dangerous, as her heightened sense of smell picked up the memory of his scent from a fallen pillow. It was placed in the box. 

What did not find itself in the box was his spare greatcoat. 

“Sumi, can you fix this?” she asked upon returning to the hangar bay, their unofficial ‘home.’ Somewhere Ben was burning fuel under the guise of ‘recon’ and Betty was recharging. 

_Fix! I like fix!_

“I think the size is fine, but we should take the decorations off. It would bring unwanted attention.” The IT-SOO droid bobbed happily as the coat was placed on a table for her to work on it. “And the other clothes, too. Nothing that can identify it as First Order.” The droid trilled with excitement. “And let me know when you’re done. I’m going to need some new clothes if I want to pass for mostly human.” 

As A.N.I. found more uniforms in abandoned footlockers, the medical droid worked happily. She was in droid heaven as the humanoid was fitted for modified uniforms that made her look like a professional. A professional _what_ was not exactly clear. 

The box of General Hux’s things was put in a secret compartment, hopefully hidden from any prying eyes and sensors. 

Then the serious salvaging began. 

* * *

_Hey, gals,_ Ben said wistfully. 

A.N.I. had carried Betty up to the highest flat point on _Finalizer_ , Sumi floating along behind them, and when they’d found a good spot the starship had landed himself primly nearby. 

In front of them, the sun was setting over the dunes, turning the sky into a kaleidoscope of colours. With vibrant retinal cameras, the android took photographs that were filed under _Memories > Postbellum > Finalizer_. The AI had since stopped relying on the Star Destroyer’s massive databanks for her storage and had begun to compress data and decide what was useless information much like a human brain. There were, however, many things she didn’t want to forget. This moment was one of them. One day she hoped to show it to her Maker. 

Betty beeped. 

_Ships have names, right?_

_Sumi!_

_Yeah, but you’re not a ship. Good try, though._ The BB-9E chirped again. _No, I’m talking about starships! Like,_ Supremacy. _Or_ Raddus. Millenium Falcon. Death Star. _That kind of thing._

“Yes, Ben, ships have names.” The android felt the gabberwool covering her arms. Sumi had to add in some fabric to keep the sleeves and shoulders from ripping when she flexed too much. 

_Okay, well, what’s my name?_

_Ben! Ben!_ Betty cheered along with her cousin droid. 

_No, Ben is my_ name _name. What about my ship name?_ The other droids were a chorus of suggestions. 

“ _Saviour_.” 

The world was silent save for the whisper of ever-shifting sand. 

Saviour, Sumi repeated. The round droid rolled from side to side, chirping away. 

_Yeah,_ Saviour, the starship agreed. There were a few more minutes of relative silence. _Though, I was hoping for something cooler, like._ Avenger, _or maybe_ Cataclysm. 

“ _Cataclysm_ is a pretty stupid name, Ben.” 

* * *

Anything useful had been stored in _Saviour_ : medical supplies, weapons, power packs, spare parts, and things that could be worth some money. They didn’t exactly need to eat and weren’t slaves to a host of other human needs and wants, but money was very useful. Also, it provided cover as salvagers. As a point of vanity, A.N.I. set up a back-up storage unit on the ship in a heavily-armoured compartment and established a third storage unit for ‘not immediately useful information.’ She couldn’t quite get over not having access to every little thing. 

She braved the planet surface once again, scooping some of the sand and glass from underneath _Finalizer_ into a canister. 

_This is really hard for you, huh?_ The voice in her head said, actually managing to sound sympathetic. 

“She was my home.” Sumi handed her a handkerchief once she was back inside the Star Destroyer. 

The three droids crowded into the last of the mainframe rooms. 

_Shouldn’t we just, I dunno, blow the core?_

The IT-SOO bobbed frantically. _Radiation! Radiation!_

“We can’t just irradiate the planet. Who knows what that’d do to the ecosystem?” 

_It’s just some bio lifeforms…_ Ben pouted from the other side of the relay. 

A.N.I. touched her synthflesh forehead against one of the mainframe housings. She took a deep breath, even though the air was stale and did nothing for her. 

“Thank you, old friend,” she whispered. 

The whole ship went dark and not even the hum of electricity could be heard. 

There was no trace that she had ever existed. Every line of code had been scrubbed, every instance of her in the surveillance records, everything had been erased. 

Ben flew _Saviour_ into the distance until the AI told him to stop on a rocky cliff. She stepped out onto the more solid ground and sighed. Turning off the relay, A.N.I. stood still with only the natural sounds of the world around them, her eyes fixed on the beautiful behemoth that was the Star Destroyer _Finalizer_. 

_Still Frame Saved. A: Memories > Postbellum > Finalizer > Filename: Goodbye_


	8. The Heart of the Republic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for not updating in so long! As I work more on my novel (currently at 160,000 words and I'm still not finished the second draft! Ack!) I find the moments when I both have the energy and the motivation to write for my fics are very rare! It's probably not worth the wait, but I hope you enjoy.

_Saviour_ cut through the black void of space, only hindered by the limitations of her hyperdrive. Despite its AI BN-005 being completely in autonomous control, A.N.I. sat in the pilot’s seat.

_Get your feet off my console._

“Aren’t _you_ touchy?” the android mocked but ultimately honoured the request.

_I don’t want you dirtying up the place._

“I think you’re forgetting who _made_ this place.” A.N.I.’s inner display was split into 4 frames: the trajectory of _Saviour_ as it hurtled towards its destination, the galactic news feed on the HoloNet, their systems’ control feed, and the last visual she had of the former First Order general Armitage Hux.

_I think you’re forgetting who’s in **control** of this place._

Talking to Ben could be exhausting, but she knew he wasn’t a bad personality; BN-005 had been the computer for _Silencer_ , the customized TIE of one Kylo Ren, and so he just couldn’t quite help being a pain in the ass. He was getting better. Or, more likely, A.N.I. was getting used to his special brand of humour.

“How much further to Coruscant?”

 _You commanded a_ Resurgent- _class Star Destroyer, what do you need me for?_

“Because I love the melodic sonorous quality of your voice in my head, of course.” A number flashed on her view of their trajectory: _2.835 standard hours._ “And have we figured out how to get landing permission?”

 _Saviour_ was technically a First Order vessel, or at least over 80% of it was. Seeing as the First Order was the loser in a rather gruesome war and branded as galactic miscreants, it wasn’t exactly in vogue to be associated with them now.

_We’ll just reuse that falsified freighter data that we used to sell that salvage._

Selling pieces of _Finalizer_ to a scrapper was like selling her grandmother’s ashes, if she had a grandmother, but they would need credits and the lighter load meant the cobbled-together ship would make better time on less fuel.

“So that’s how we got permission to land. I just thought they weren’t picky about their sellers and buyers,” A.N.I. mused aloud even though she didn’t have to; the android, BN-005, IT-SOO, and the BB-9E were all linked by _Saviour_ ’s computer uplink. “Wait, where did you get falsified freighter data?”

_For an all-knowing AI, you’re pretty thick._

“Hey!”

_The Order had false data for recon and spy ships, of course. I just found it in that massive pile of data you dumped in the backups._

“Well, aren’t you clever?” she cooed. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

_I wanted to wait until it seemed more impressive._

“Colour me impressed, then. Maybe taking you along wasn’t such a bad idea.”

_If programs could blush._

“Ben, I’m starting to think you might be more human than me.”

_Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment._

“Well, let’s hope the rest of the galaxy doesn’t catch on.” With an unnecessary flourish, A.N.I. lept from her seat.

It had been a standard month since _Finalizer_ went down on the treacherous sandy planet of Atollon in what people were calling the Battle of Atollon, the end of the First Order, and no amount of HoloNet data mining or comms channel spying had provided any information on where the shuttle carrying the former general had gone. For all she knew, it had been reduced to splinters, hurling its occupants’ atoms to the far barren reaches of space.

So their first stop would be to the central hub of the galaxy: Coruscant.

* * *

“Alright, I have… red,” A.N.I. muttered as she sorted through the crate of supplies they’d bought off a merchant refuelling station, “gold, and silver.”

Betty made a series of beeps and whistles.

 _Red!_ Sumi bobbed as she chanted the word, watching with interest as the android threw down a drop cloth to protect _Saviour_ ’s decking and shook up a can of silver.

“Hell, let’s use them all,” she said as she covered certain parts of Betty’s components and surface.

One couldn’t very well go around with a First Order Issue BB-9E droid hot on their heels.

* * *

It didn’t take a genius to know that you couldn’t very well walk into the Republic Central Administration building and ask, ‘Do you happen to have a very wanted criminal secretly imprisoned, by any chance?’

It is generally considered rude and, frankly, a good way to also be secretly imprisoned when they seize you _and_ your droid, realize you _too_ are a droid, and that everything you own has the First Order’s signature _all **over** it._

First they’ll ask _who_ are you, and then comes _what_ are you, and finally it ends with you having your entire brain scrambled so some greasy robotics nerd that is too eccentric to bathe regularly can figure out how to make you work for the Republic as a bounty hunter to track down all those First Order rats.

Which wouldn’t be such a bad plan if you could keep your personality together after having it scrambled like an electronic egg.

There were all these things to consider while A.N.I. sat in a grimy corner, plugged into a terminal so far down into the city-planet’s cesspool of an infrastructure that there was no sunlight.

Betty whistled ominously.

“Charming place, I know,” the android grumbled to herself as she lazily worked through the Republic’s firewalls.

A.N.I. didn’t bother sorting through the information as it came, instead deciding to just download it all into the storage blocks she’d emptied onto _Saviour_ ’s databanks for this same purpose.

For the undercity wasn’t exactly safe, though it was certainly much safer for her than any normal sentient. She just didn’t look forward to unwanted attention and anything that might mean they’d have to leave Coruscant before they had all they needed.

A.N.I. was just finishing her task when her proximity alarm went off and Betty whistled urgently.

A group of gangers stood nearby, trying to look threatening with their eclectic fashion sense, uneven coloured hair, and the undoubtedly stolen weapons in their hands. Slowly, for effect, A.N.I. came to her full height and stared at them expressionless, for effect. The young man at the forefront, a human with a bright-blue mohawk that was impressively styled by hand and not an anti-gravity field, was undoubtedly their leader and he grinned none too kindly.

“You made a bad decision coming around here, ma’am.”

“Since you know your manners, I’ll give you a warning,” A.N.I. replied coolly. The gang leader faltered just slightly and she took the opportunity to slam her fist nonchalantly on the permacrete wall to her left, the material cracking, crumbling, and disintegrating, leaving behind a dent roughly a metre in diameter and ten centimetres deep.

The entire group took a step back, likely noting how it had taken little effort and left no visible damage to the woman’s hand, its owner even lifting it up to show it off, wiggling the fingers.

“How about you move along, now, hm? Be good bad boys and girls somewhere else with all of your limbs intact,” A.N.I. purred suggestively, enjoying the effect she was having.

The gangers hesitated once more and, as one, A.N.I. took a step forward and Betty deployed both her defensive shocking arm and welder.

The gangers took flight, one of them accidentally dropping his blaster in his urgency. A.N.I. picked it up, took out the power cell, and twisted the metal-plastic composite in her bare hands. She held it up for approval. “They say art is the essence of humanity.”

Betty beeped and chirped. 

“Yeah, not my best work,” A.N.I. remarked and threw the useless piece of weaponry into a forgotten pile of rubbish.

* * *

As she walked through the underbelly of the city, A.N.I. sorted through her new data, cataloguing and pruning information as she deemed fit. There was enough there to blackmail officials, aristocrats, public figures, but she’d need to blackmail the Gods themselves to find any information on the location of Armitage Hux, Former General of the Former First Order.

At the very least she found it very unlikely that he was dead. Or rather, not captured and executed or tucked into some secret Republic prison.

Which made her job very difficult.

There was, however, a lot of information that narrowed a list of people who had a penchant for knowing more than they should. This led her to a cantina run by a Bith by the name of Joolla Kera. His black almost impossibly large eyes regarded the pair as they walked straight towards him, the android, unbeknownst to him, scanning the room as they did so. It wasn’t too busy, which, given the location and the time of day, wasn’t entirely strange.

Joolla jabbed a finger at the gold-and-silver droid by her feet and made a protest in Bith.

A.N.I. smiled at him easily, plaintively. “This is a rough neighbourhood, if I leave it outside, who knows what will happen to it?”

Betty made an indignant noise. _Sorry, you know how it is,_ A.N.I. apologized over the commlink.

The Bith regarded the droid silently for a moment. “I’ll buy for the both of us, if that’s the problem.”

This appeased the bartender and there was an exchange of credits for drinks. The first disappeared quickly and the second was the subject of her learned fidgeting. “I am looking for someone.”

Joolla Kera made a dismissive string of sounds.

“He’s _very_ important to me and I’m afraid I’m running out of options. I’d be _very_ grateful-” she produced a credit chip from her jacket and placed it, fingers securing it, on the bartop “if you could tell me everything you know.”

Joolla was beginning to be tempted.

“It’s a matter of some… secrecy,” A.N.I. started, not quite having mastered the art of deception, at least not in public. In Bith she said, “ _Big game. Dangerous game. The type that used to have very powerful weapons. The type the Republic is looking for._ ”

“ _You a bounty hunter?_ ” the pink craniopod asked, feeling like he was up to speed.

“ _Like I said, he’s important to me,_ ” she replied. She nudged the credit chip halfway out from under her fingers. “ _Do you know anything about any such people?_ ”

“ _I hear a lot of things,_ ” Joolla said rather confidently, eyeing the credit chip as his hand inched closer to the offered chip, “ _I also know a lot of people who know a lot of things. What’s this important person look like?_ ”

“ _Human, of course,_ ” A.N.I. began, watching his face closely for any sign of distress that might indicate the intention to lie. “ _High ranking._ ”

“ _Not anymore,_ ” the Bith added with a bit of laughter. “ _Sure, I know about some officers. Not many left. Most of them are sitting in a cell or have a bolt hole in their cranium._ ”

“ _No, if this one was dead, we’d know, it’d be all over the Net,_ ” A.N.I. insisted coolly, and she slid the credit chip out just far enough that it indicated the amount stored on it. Joolla’s eyes, if they were capable of it, widened. His touch grazed the other end. “ _Red hair._ ”

The Bith snatched his hand back, panic setting in. She questioned him with a subtle glance. “ _I don’t know who you’re talking about._ ”

“ _Of course you do,_ ” she retorted, “ _everyone does._ ” The Bith shook his head. “ _What are you afraid of? If you know him, just give him my name. It’s A.N.I. He’ll know me._ ”

“ _I don’t know him,_ ” Joolla Kera denied forcefully.

“ _Maybe you know someone who does?_ ” When the pink Bith shook his large head again, A.N.I. retracted the credit chip and made to put it in her pocket. “Thanks for the drink-”

“ _Wait!_ ” Joolla screeched, quietly but firmly. “ _I know some things, but it’s worth more than that._ ”

“ _How much more?_ ”

“ _You look pretty capable,_ ” the Bith started, obviously impressed that a human woman managed, _dared_ , to wander this part of the planet apparently unarmed, “ _Some people owe me money. You know, tabs and breaking things, that sort of stuff. I have to pay the gangs an arm and a leg to keep this place-_ ”

“ _Give me names and amounts,_ ” A.N.I. interrupted sternly, flexing synthetic muscle under her altered uniform jacket. Reading the list, she remarked, “ _This better be some good information._ ”

Tracking down a bunch of low-life thugs in a planet that was basically one big city and convincing them to hand over credits was harder than it sounded, and it sounded _really_ hard. However, an android does not sleep, it does not need to eat, and it does not feel pain or know fear.

It does, however, get mad when someone tears off a sleeve. It proceeds to take more than demanded for compensation and gives the Rodian in question a scare when it appears to suddenly decide to finish the job.

A.N.I. had found it… _fun._ For a while, she had managed to forget that she was on a very important mission. Maybe when the general died, as all biological beings did, and her oath of protection was rendered null, she would be a bounty hunter. She’d be very good at it.

“ _They say the Dread General’s shuttle was picked up on Klatooine,_ ” Joolla Kera told her after the initial excitement of seeing so many credit chips. “ _It’s sitting in an abandoned hangar in the Iron District._ ”

“ _What’s it doing there? Why doesn’t the Republic have it?_ ” she questioned, confused. There was no record of such a shuttle being given to the Republic for investigation.

“ _The man who found it, Rune Vav, is keeping it, hoping to sell it for his weight in credits,_ ” the Bith explained. A feral grin spread across A.N.I.’s synthflesh face.

“We’ll see about that.”

A.N.I. found the abandoned hangar, stuck in one of the worst parts of Coruscant if you ignored the subterranean bowels of the artificial water systems, but not by much. She searched the shuttle from nose to tail, top to bottom. The flight log offered little help, a path that could have meant anything. It was better than nothing, she supposed.

It didn’t hurt that she found a glove stashed away somewhere, the smell of tarine, gabberwool, and hair oil still clinging to it. Careful not to get caught for literally sniffing around in this place, A.N.I. sealed the glove up in a flimsiplast bag and snuck out, already formulating a plan to hunt down and meet her Maker once again.

* * *

The two droids, having finally freed themselves from the less desirable parts of the planet, stood in the shadow of the Jedi Temple, light glinting off of Betty’s gold and silver finish where the sun broke through the crumbling roof. She made a whistling noise.

“Too bad, I guess. Place looks like it would’ve been really cool.” A.N.I. had all sorts of data on the Jedi clunking around in her data stores, but it was undeniably different to be standing in the ruins themselves. It was… sad. In a human way.

Betty beeped at her feet.

“Yeah, sure, who knows if we’ll ever come here again,” A.N.I. replied and moved further into the once beautiful crown jewel of the city-planet. She ignored signs about hazardous conditions due to disrepair and neither droid was particularly worried about trespassing. Who had any claim to it? All the Jedi were long gone.

It felt as much a crypt as it was just a dusty abandoned building, the air stale and off, though this didn’t bother them since they didn’t need air, but A.N.I. didn’t turn off her olfactory sensors. One never knows when they might notice a difference.

Like now. There was a trail of disturbed dust, which could have been a long time ago, but the shift of the air meant it had been recent. It smelled like… sunlight, traffic exhaust, leather, black dye, shampoo - nice shampoo - and grease, the kind used to lubricate speeder bikes. Metal. Power cells.

_Kyber crystals._

Without a sound, she asked Betty, _A Jedi or a Sith?_

Realizing the gravity of such a question, Betty didn’t make a sound, but she had perfected the art of appearing apprehensive.

A.N.I. pressed further into the temple, following the trail of shifted air.

It led her deep into the bowels of the beautiful building, designed for its form rather than function, though that form was currently crumbling and somewhat defaced. Furniture laid on its side, some smashed and others missing. The smell of death had long gone, but there were dark splotches on floors and walls alike, the faint scent only perceptible to the strongest of senses. However, the scent that the android was most interested in became more apparent the further in they went, its source closer and closer.

The hallway emptied out into a circular chamber, a heavy door straight ahead, but an initial glance indicated the room was empty. A.N.I.’s optics scanned the area without stepping into the chamber. The door had been scored as if scratched by a superheated pair of claws in a criss-cross pattern. Where the locking mechanism should have been, or one of undoubtedly many, was a round scorch mark, a black puffball bloom on the unyielding material. On the floor she could see footprints in the dust, pacing back and forth in front of the door, sliding here, scuffing there. Only one set entered the chamber, none left, and there was no indication that the door had been successfully breached.

She analysed the air one last time, just to be sure.

“We fought before and it didn’t end well for you. I suggest you not try it again,” A.N.I. announced to the seemingly empty room. There was only the barest of sounds, the faintest hint of motion. So she stepped forward.

The sound of a lit lightsaber reverberated in the chamber and there was the distinct hiss of something burning. The weapon’s owner gritted their teeth in frustration, but stared, disbelieving, at where the red energy beam was held in her grasp, synthflesh burning away to reveal pale-blue metal.

“So nice to see you again, Kylo,” A.N.I. purred. 

_Prztztzzz-_

“Likewise,” the Sith growled in his deep voice, brown eyes lit with the red glow of his weapon. He deactivated the blade to be released from her grip, but before he could hit the activator and swing it again, she pushed out with the now-bare hand, electricity rushing through it and into his body where the blow connected with his abdomen.

The man barked a deprecating laugh. “That won’t work on me, I’ve had worse.”

“Do you want to test the limitations of your body?” As innocent as her tone was, it had been a threat.

The lightsaber faded back to its hilt and the two stared at one another, one much more amused than the other.

“You just won’t die, will you?” he sighed, watching as the android turned away from him to regard the chamber’s main feature.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your loving creator had you deactivated,” Ren started, obviously annoyed that she was ignoring him, “and I know the _Finalizer_ crashed in the Battle of Atollon. Figured you’d be scrap.”

“You underestimate me,” A.N.I. preened, lips curling upwards, bare-metal hand feeling the surface of the door. “I believe that is the downfall of you Force-wielders. I’d be careful not to do it again.”

“Hux really build you that well?” he asked, irritated. Kylo finally regarded Betty as she decided there would be no more fighting and rolled into the chamber, beeping and chirping at them. “A BB-9E? A pet of yours?”

“Betty is a friend,” she answered with disinterest, the droid agreeing by her foot.

_Zzstrrrtsssss-_

“Nice paint job. Down to the nanoparticle, I’d bet,” the former leader of the Knights of Ren and brief Supreme Leader of the First Order remarked with some admiration. Betty swiveled her head and thanked him. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question,” A.N.I. rebutted, turning away from the door.

“You could,” he grumbled, “but I asked first.”

“I was in the neighbourhood,” she answered flippantly, shrugging her shoulders.

“Atollon isn’t exactly ‘in the neighbourhood,’ droid.”

“No, but I am down here because I was on the surface and found a curious little trail, like a fairytale,” A.N.I. explained with an innocent smile on her face, “ _human._ ”

“He really _did_ do a good job on you,” Kylo muttered under his breath, taking in the person, the _thing_ , in front of him. “If I didn’t know better, and if I didn’t sense it, I would think you were a real person.”

“He wasn’t as dumb as you thought he was, hm?”

“I suppose I stand corrected in some regards.”

“So, what is someone like you doing in a place like this?” A.N.I. asked, raising her eyebrows suggestively, a smirk spreading across her face. “Besides the fact that brooding princes love deep dark dungeons.”

He made a sound of irritation and jerked his head in the direction of the door. “Thought you were smart.”

“I think there’s something very important behind that door,” she remarked, ignoring his snide comment, “and I think you have been failing to get through for, oh, 4 hours.” Kylo Ren made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat, but she ignored that too. “And I think you’re going to ask me if I have some way to open it without blasting this place from orbit.”

“Why would I do that?” he questioned after a moment of consideration, his jaw working side to side to turn his thoughts.

“Because I am a very sophisticated piece of machinery,” A.N.I. started, “and all I ask in return is that you help me with my own little quest.”

_Hestssszzzz-_

“And what can I do for you? You can obviously handle yourself,” Kylo implied, gesturing at her flayed hand, the edges of the synthflesh singed to a black char that kept breaking off when she moved.

“I am looking for Armitage,” the android answered plainly.

“Raising people from the dead isn’t exactly in my shuttle bay.” A.N.I. scoffed at his joke. “What, you think he’s alive?”

“Last I saw, he was on a shuttle abandoning ship and I have scrubbed every character, image, and encrypted file to be found in the Net and the Republic databanks. Nothing of him being alive or dead.”

“So, what, you a bounty hunter now? Chasing the biggest prize?” 

“I want to know he’s safe and I want to keep him that way.”

It was Ren’s turn to scoff. “What, trying to save the princess? I guess that makes you a knight.”

_-futsssszzzz-_

“I _am_ mostly metal,” A.N.I. said with a shrug.

“And how am _I_ supposed to help you find a man who has disappeared off the face of the entire galaxy?” he asked, more curious than annoyed.

“You have perhaps the only tool not available to me,” the android explained rather simply, almost disappointed. “I’m afraid any other person such as yourself would use the opportunity to bring Armitage to the Republic.”

“How do you know I’m not working for the Republic now? Aren’t you suspicious of why I’m walking around, unfettered and unafraid?”

“Oh, I know you’ve returned to your darling mother’s side,” A.N.I. answered him with a wry smile, amused at his discomfort, “but I know that’s a formality. If you were truly working with them, you’d be alone. I also know you’re not afraid of anything and it’d take quite the army to fetter you, Kylo. You’re a force to be reckoned with.”

“Is that a compliment I hear?” Ren remarked in genuine disbelief.

“It is,” she verified, jerking up her chin to indicate the entirety of him, “but you seem to be lacking your own particular set of skills. That’s where I come in handy.”

“So you propose a partnership.”

“For the moment. You get what you want from behind that door, you get me what I want, and we’ll go on our own merry ways,” A.N.I. explained further, a gentle expression on her synthflesh face.

Kylo Ren looked her up and down, his thoughts turning over the possibilities of such an arrangement. “I can’t guarantee anything.”

“Then it’d be a favour for old time’s sake,” she assured him, ignoring the brash chirping from her friend.

_HEY!_

Ren gave her a confused look as the android’s face lost most of its artificial life. _What is it, Ben? Trouble?_

 _No!_ the AI cried, _I’ve been trying to reach you for what feels like forever! I thought **you** were the one in trouble!_

 _Sorry, it must be something about this room,_ A.N.I. posited, gesticulating with her hand even though there was no way for Ben to know that. Kylo’s face scrunched and shifted as he watched, calculating the chance that General Hux’s masterpiece was beginning to degrade.

 _I thought Kylo got you,_ Ben explained, fear and relief almost decipherable in his less sophisticated tone. _Tell him hi._

 _Nope, just a friendly chat._ The life snapped back into her face, startling the Sith slightly. “Ben says hi, by the way.”

“Ben?” the man asked, disturbed.

_I fly that fucker around for how long and he can’t remember me?_

“He’s pretty mad you left him in a heap on _Finalizer_ , but I think he’s happier with _Saviour_ than _Silencer_ ,” A.N.I. explained, ignoring the slew of inventive curses and threats buzzing in her comm channel.

“Wait a minute,” Kylo started, holding out his hand, fingers spread. “You have my ship?”

“Not exactly.” She laughed in response to Ben’s opinion on the matter. “He’s cooler now. I think being an even more custom-built rig is inflating his ego.”

Kylo opened his mouth and then shut it again, looking away to be with his own thoughts. He did this again several times, each time A.N.I. imagined the words he would start to say. _He? Ben? Custom-built rig? Cooler?_

“Fancy that, your ship’s computer having your name. Was it a coincidence?” The man growled, a feral sound with exposed fangs. A.N.I. held up her hands defensively. “Sorry, we’re not there yet, got it. Just curious about a friend.”

The snarl retreated and she gave him a moment to be alone with his thoughts again, pacing in front of the locked door like a caged rancor. He stopped suddenly and looked boldly into her perfectly human face. “Fine. We have a deal.”

“I assume nothing behind that door is going to end the universe or some such nonsense?” she asked even though she was already moving to further assess the integrity of the door. “I’d like to enjoy my humanity for a bit longer. Unlike you, I don’t have the comfort of becoming one with the Force when this is all over.”

Kylo Ren snorted derisively, though he stood out of the way as he watched the two droids work on a panel concealed in the wall. “No, it’s just information.”

“Good to hear,” A.N.I. remarked genuinely. “To think I once hated you for wrecking my ship.”

“Didn’t know droids could change their mind. Artoo is about as stuck in his ways as a wild bantha.”

“It’s human to forgive,” she remarked dispassionately, obviously focusing most of her circuits on her work.

“Being human is a curse.”

“I’d say living forever, virtually indestructible, is a curse.” He couldn’t see it, but A.N.I. had paused her task, making it appear as if it was merely difficult.

“Being human, even with the Force at your disposal- it’s all too limited,” Kylo insisted, pacing the floor again, blind to ruse.

“Everyone I will ever care about will die someday,” A.N.I. interrupted, staring at where her hidden datalink tool was plugged into an exposed port in the wall, “and I will outlive them for centuries, millennia- who knows how long. No amount of my superior abilities will ever keep them from dying, but they will return to the Force, to something bigger than all of us, perhaps to the people they loved. But where will I go? I will just… cease to exist.”

The pacing stopped at some point behind her right shoulder. “That’s better than being weak. Who needs people when-”

The android, rising to her feet and whirling around to face her temporary partner, jerked her hand away from the wall so quickly she nearly ripped the dataport from its wiring. “People are everything!” A.N.I. cried, somehow more human than any of her normal expressions. “You think being alone is a sign of power? You’re jealous of what I can do? Look at what I’m doing!”

Kylo was bewildered, looking between her gesticulating hand and the open tile in the wall. In his confused brown eyes, she could see his thoughts almost as clear as if she had the Force at her disposal. “Not that! I’m going through all this trouble, risking having my brain scrambled or ripped apart by supermagnets or hurled into a fucking star or whatever- for what? For someone I care about! That cares about me!”

The man looked away and was silent, so A.N.I. went back to her work. She was always aware of what he was doing, keeping track of his movements, his biosigns, listening for him to start a conversation, but she didn’t dare press the issue. What was the point? She’d get this door open, he’d figure out some clue about where the general was, and then they’d part ways, most likely until one of them - probably him - died.

The door opened with a pained groan, but it opened nonetheless. The android expected Kylo to rush inside, excited to have one rather annoying obstacle out of his way, but he stayed still, watching the portal, perhaps expecting it to shut once again for good.

“You’re welcome,” she stated rather indignantly, inflecting her tone like a mother scolding an ungrateful child.

This served to break Kylo Ren from his daze. “Right.”

The room contained shelves upon shelves upon boxes upon crates of things; it looked like the storage room of a rather extensive museum collection or a rich hoarder’s basement. They stood a few feet into the room, but it appeared to go on forever in three directions, obscured by darkness and contents alike.

The former Knight turned on his heel, black cape swishing around him in the slight breeze he’d created, and he regarded the android earnestly. “Trying to track down Hux will take a while. I haven’t done something like that in a long time.”

In rather human fashion, A.N.I. took a deep breath and sighed. She produced a chip from a jacket pocket and inserted it into a slot in her exposed metal flesh, waited a moment, and then handed it to the confused prince. “A schematic for a keycard to open the door. We can lock up and you can come back later.”

Kylo took the chip from her and stared at it, so small in his large gloved hand. He secreted it away into a hidden pocket in his tunic. “You’ll come back with me, just to make sure it works.”

“I’m kind of in a rush,” the android remarked and added, “but I guess that’s fair.”

“Lock the door, leave no clue as to how to open it, and I’ll meet you at this address.” Ren handed her a keycard, the address and room number appearing as a holographic shimmer as she turned it over in her hand.

In a swirl of black fabric, he swept past the android and retreated with purposeful strides.


	9. The Durasteel Menagerie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's finally over! I apologize for how long it took me to finish (in part due to my novel, but probably mostly just life in general and a rough emotional patch) but at least I finished, yeah? I don't know how satisfying the ending is, I'm hoping at least a little. I feel like this story really changes writing-tone as it goes on, so it's hard for me to judge how I really feel about it.   
> Obviously, there are a lot of moral issues that go along with Hux in canon, which is why I normally try to write around things, either by cutting out the Big Bad parts or removing his agency regarding those issues, but I didn't really focus on that much in this story. In addition to this and of course the implications of Hux being A.N.I.'s creator, I didn't really write this to be a morality tale and so there is no great conflict in the end about either of these things (though they're mentioned.) I wrote the end to resolve their separation and to showcase A.N.I.'s growth. Also, I love Found Family, so there is plenty of that.  
> Thank you for reading my work, especially if you leave comments, because I get excited every time! I've been struggling a lot regarding my writing as I start my journey as a 'real' writer, but fanfiction has helped me grow and your feedback, whether large or small, has given me the encouragement to nurture that growth.

Betty whistled and slid her head back on its magnetic neck to gaze up at the lofty apartment building, its speartip roof lost somewhere in the darkness of the night sky with only the navigation lights and illuminated windows to distinguish it from the rest of the Coruscant skyline.

“No foolin’,” A.N.I. muttered to herself after checking the address one more time. According to her resources, they were in the heart of the most expensive neighbourhood on the city-planet. One could even see the refurbished Senate building.

The two droids had locked up the vault under the ruined Jedi Temple and relayed the coordinates and permissions for Ren’s personal landing pad to _Saviour_ once they resurfaced. Due to the heavy air traffic, they didn’t wait to be picked up and decided it wasn’t that far for a pair of legs that didn’t quit and, well, a ball. One long turbolift ride and door later, A.N.I. and Betty stood in the sparsely-decorated spacious sitting area of a Coruscant penthouse suite.

With no one to greet them, the android decided to have a look around and inadvertently found the landing pad. Well, not that inadvertent, they had tracking systems of course.

“Never seen anything like this,” Kylo Ren grumbled from underneath _Saviour_ ’s wing, though that grumble had been rather impressed, almost _excited_. “You can tell where everything came from, if you really know your ships, but it also… looks like its own design, not some cobbled-together junker.”

“One of a kind. Built her ourselves, so I’ll take the compliment,” A.N.I. explained with a casual shrug. “Even if we could’ve gotten my old beauty back in the air, can’t exactly go around in a Star Destroyer. It’s not in style anymore.”

The man hummed absently in response, the black leather of his gloves gliding along a wing, making a sound that probably only her highly attuned sensors could pick up. She sighed, nearly feeling sorry for him, so enamoured by the sight of something that could take him far away from where he was being ‘kept.’ “Ben, open up, will ya?”

Kylo gave her a queer look until the sound of a loading ramp echoed off the apartment’s glass walls. Marching past him with purpose, hands in her pockets, A.N.I. led the Sith Lord inside where she introduced him to the ship. “Feel free to look around.”

_Don’t scuff anything._

“Ben, we really need to get you a voice modulator,” she argued, turning her head instinctively to the cockpit as if that was where the AI sat. “I don’t exactly like being your mouthpiece when you’re being a brat.”

 _Tell him I’m mad._ The computer did his best approximation of a digital pout.

“Did Hux design you to do all of this?” Ren asked before A.N.I. could even begin to entertain the idea of being both a translator and relay point for the computer-human conversation.

“Do what?”

The Prince Without A Kingdom gestured at _Saviour_ ’s interior, the silver-and-gold BB-9E unit, and the red IT-SOO medical droid that bobbed up to them, practically vibrating with excitement. “Form a droid army.”

“Don’t tell the Republic,” the android answered with such deadpan humour that Kylo Ren hesitated, unsure if he had hit the mark with unintended accuracy. Her face broke out into a grin, which alleviated his concern, but she wouldn’t have known that if she couldn’t read the minutiae of his biosigns. “I got lonely in that old wreck out in the desert. And they understand me better than any of the old Order crew did. Besides, once you start stripping off the limitations, they’re downright fun. Ben knows quite a few bawdy jokes, though I’m not sure how a computer understand human mating rituals.”

“Yeah, I know some droids like that,” Kylo mumbled, though not entirely without his own humour. A.N.I. let him wander the ship, keeping a watchful eye as he inspected the engines, weapons system, and even sat in the pilot’s chair. “Reminds me of a ship I haven’t been in for a long time…”

“Good or bad memory?” A.N.I. asked as she watched him look over the controls with an expert pilot’s eye. 

“I’m sure you’re asking to be polite, because I don’t doubt Hux let you know everything about me in case he needed me gone,” the man replied a little reproachfully, but the android appeared incapable of taking offence. She opened her mouth, perhaps to either confirm or deny his accusation, but ended up cackling as he practically fell out of his seat; once his boots touched the control panel, a series of alarms sounded, so loud they could have woken the dead.

 _NO FEET ON MY DASH!_ Ben managed to screech by manipulating several sounds available to him.

“I did _not_ teach him how to do that,” A.N.I. pointed out, rubbing her perfect chin that needed no maintenance and felt no itches.

Obviously rattled, Kylo Ren started to retrace his path out of _Saviour_ with lumbering strides. “Hux was _insane_.”

“I think this is outside the realm of possibilities one imagines when they build an AI,” A.N.I. remarked maybe a bit too defensively. She followed him back into the apartment, pretending to inspect the room even though it had already been thoroughly scanned on the way in. “Quite the place.”

“Better than a prison cell, but it’s all the same,” the former Supreme Leader sighed as he lit some strategically-placed candles, their flames the only source of light other than that which assaulted them from the cityscape.

“I might have perfect recall,” A.N.I. started, watching the man get ready to make good on his promise, “but it doesn’t take a computer to remember that we met while you were tomb raiding. Doesn’t exactly cry ‘prince locked in the high tower,’ does it?”

“I can’t tell if I like you or not.” By his tone, she determined that it was an honest statement of confusion. She smiled; the idea of Kylo Ren actually _liking_ her, let alone anyone, was downright mind-boggling. Thankfully, her mind could not be boggled.

“Telling me that was a mistake,” she laughed, “Now I know there’s a possibility that you like me.”

Kylo huffed but it wasn’t entirely convincing. “What will you do if Hux is dead?”

“What’s it matter to you? You hated him.”

“Consider me curious,” he replied sonorously.

A.N.I. shrugged and looked out at the city, tracking all of the ships and speeders that went past. “I dunno, research? Bounty hunting? I have to say, strongarming people to get information out of a cantina barkeep was pretty fun.”

“I can imagine you’re quite good at it,” Ren posited, pointedly glancing at her torn jacket sleeve. A.N.I. looked at it, turned her attention to the other one, and expertly evened the score with a soft _rip_.

Holding the piece of fabric up, she asked, “Do you think it would be more intimidating if I let my metal show?”

“No, I think if you get into a nasty argument, you should rip your skin off and yell the most intimidating curse words you know,” Kylo offered seriously, though his pouty lips curled at one corner. “You probably have more languages at your disposal than 3PO, but at least you’d actually put them to good use.”

“If I didn’t know any better,” A.N.I. mused as she rolled the piece of wasted fabric up, handing it to Betty for her to take back to the ship, “I would think you _want_ me to hang around.”

“Nah, I think you should go with the bounty hunting,” he deflected in the face of her knowing smirk, turning his face away in the hopes that the low light would hide the more telling parts of his expression. Unfortunately, A.N.I. had more than normal human vision at her disposal.

“In that case,” she started, finding the interaction rather curious but not wishing to go down a distracting road. Besides, how would her Maker react if he learned she’d been flirting with _him_ of all people? The android opened her jacket and removed the sealed bag she’d stored in a secret pocket, handing it to the humanoid reverently.

Kylo Ren arched an eyebrow. “What is this?”

“Hux’s glove. Found it in the shuttle they abandoned after Atollon,” A.N.I. explained wistfully. “I thought… Well, I don’t know much about the Force, but I thought maybe having something they touched recently might… make it easier?”

“I suppose it can’t hurt,” he muttered, almost equally as unsure as his newfound friend.

“I also have the shuttle’s flight data, might give a clue.”

“ _That_ might actually help.”

Apparently using the Force to track someone down over the expanse of the galaxy took a long time and was very taxing. A.N.I. stood perfectly still, as was the talent of droids, and even when things began to float around the room she didn’t bother to move, worried that it would somehow distract the Sith Lord and break the spell.

“Akrit’tar.”

“What?” A.N.I. replied immediately to the sudden sound of his voice. “What would he be doing there? It’s an old Imperial prison, it’s abandoned.”

“Apparently not,” Kylo surmised as he slid back into the local reality of Coruscant. “Not alone, either.”

“He wasn’t alone on the shuttle, so I’m not surprised.”

Kylo’s brown eyes watched as the android began to pace. “And here I thought only 3PO gets nervous.”

“There’s nothing in the Republic records of Akrit’tar being anything but abandoned, even in the most encrypted files,” A.N.I. explained as if he hadn’t said anything at all. “Nor was it exactly mentioned in the First Order.”

“Maybe Hux knew something you don’t,” Ren posited with a wave of his hand. “Or it’s something completely new that not even the Republic knows about. Only one way to find out.”

“I don’t like this.”

“ _I have a bad feeling about this_ ,” Kylo said with a soft laugh.

A.N.I. stopped her pacing and gave him a funny look. “What?”

“Nothing,” he dismissed, expression briefly dark. “Well, he didn’t exactly seem imprisoned, so maybe our general is leading the new grandchild of the Empire.”

“No one wanted the second-pressing, what would he do with a third?” she scoffed, going back to her pacing.

“No loyalty, huh?”

“Hux may have made me, but that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of thinking his ideas are ridiculous,” A.N.I. argued, though her frustration was not aimed at him. “I’ve disagreed with him on a good number of subjects.”

Kylo shrugged off the conversation and read his datapad to allow the android time to work out the nervous energy in her wiring. Finally, he put it down on a table with a soft _thud_. “I don’t want to keep you waiting from what is obviously going to be a long journey, so let’s verify this key’s integrity and you can be on your way.”

A.N.I. stopped on a dime and sighed for emphasis. “Of course. Don’t want to leave and you tell the Republic where I’m going so you can get into your precious secret vault again.”

“You know, I am having an easier time believing Hux made you,” Kylo admitted with a smirk.

“You’re giving me half a mind to stay,” the android rebutted perhaps a bit too seductively. “Almost make me sorry I kicked your ass that one time.”

“I’m starting to think people kicking my ass is my type,” he said before he could stop himself. Ren was staring out the window at the glittering lights when A.N.I. carefully approached him. The man recoiled in surprise at the touch of her hand on his cheek. “What are you doing?”

“I guess _sad and lonely_ is _my_ type,” she explained gently.

“I am neither of those things,” Kylo lied.

“You’re about as bad at lying as-”

“Don’t say it,” he interrupted her with a snarl. This time he did not move away when her hand found his shoulder, because he knew that she could easily shatter his bones and grind them into dust without missing a beat. But the gesture was careful and reminded him of when Uncle Chewy would lay his massive powerful paws on his little shoulders; somehow, knowing that the hand held so much destructive potential made it feel that much more tender to be caressed by it.

“If he’s gone,” A.N.I. whispered, the apertures of her eyes dilating to portray her sincerity, “I can come be your knight in shining armour. Rescue you from your high tower. If you want. Maybe I’ll do it even if he’s alive.”

Kylo scoffed, not believing for a second that Hux and him could survive each other’s presence for much longer, but then the idea that someone _wanted_ to be stuck in a ship with him, to risk their safety and freedom to give him back _his_ freedom, seemingly without a desire for his strength in the Force but just because he was _him_ , and then go on unstructured galactic adventures? That made him falter. “Why would you do that?”

The android kissed his cheek and shrugged once she’d pulled away. “Maybe you’ve grown on me, now that you’re not ruining my ship.”

* * *

The walk back to the ruined Jedi Temple was decidedly quiet, though the android didn’t exactly need a conversation to keep herself from getting bored. In fact, through the miracle of quantum data-streaming, the number of conversations she could be engaged in during their walk was nearly impossible to count. Well, she could have counted them, but that is a rather unnecessary point.

“So, how realistic _are_ you?” Kylo asked suddenly, perhaps confident enough that they were far away from prying eyes and ears in the temple’s twisting depths. 

“Is that how you pick up all of your girlfriends?” A.N.I. countered with a snort. A blush crept up on his cheeks. “Are you going to ask if you can see for yourself?”

“I was just wondering how much of a pervert Hux is,” he explained timidly, though he had tried to bite it off like an insult that failed to hit the sensitive nerve that she didn’t even have.

“I think the purpose of making me realistic was to fool people,” the android mused, casually kicking a piece of rubble out of her way.

“So he didn’t… _ya know?_ ”

“He didn’t see a point, I didn’t have enough preliminary data for it to be, _ya know_ ,” she smirked at him, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, “worth it.”

“What about now?” Kylo asked before he could have thought better of it. A.N.I. was fairly certain the flinch in his shoulders had been a conscious reaction to his own dumb question.

“I’ve had a lot of time to process data now that I’m no longer concerned with an entire ship’s worth of problems,” she started to explain with disinterest, “but I have not had any… _practical_ exercise-”

“Okay, _okay_ , I get it,” he interrupted insistently with a huff. “Why are you like this all of a sudden?”

“You’re cuter when you blush.” This caused the human to growl in the back of his throat, but he didn’t bother verbally denying her accusation.

“He’s basically your father, isn’t that weird?” Kylo mused, trying to shift the focus of their conversation away from him.

“I’m an android.”

“Yeah, but-” 

“Didn’t Anakin Skywalker make C-3PO?”

“Yes, but he didn’t try to _fuck_ him!”

“You don’t know that.” Kylo Ren gave her a look of absolute horror. A.N.I. merely shrugged. “Hux is probably more like my god than a father.”

“I suppose, seeing as he’s not really _either_ ,” he relented with a sigh.

“If you met your god- or a god- would it be weird if you screwed ‘em?” the android asked the hallway.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Kylo admitted with another soul-weary sigh.

“Won’t know until you meet God,” A.N.I. said as she inserted the newly fabricated keycard into the vault’s lock. When it beeped happily and the doors swished open, she added with a smirk, “And _fuck ‘em_.”

* * *

“The _Finalizer_ is making planetfall!” Lieutenant Mitaka cried out into the shuttle’s cabin as he read the data streaming across his readouts. “It appears to be a controlled crash, but she can’t possibly come away operational!”

General Hux’s heart was in his throat but years of hiding any semblance of emotion with his patented steely exterior allowed him to bark orders to the shuttle with the same authority he had commanded a Star Destroyer. “Make our jump to Akrit’tar!”

Akrit’tar was a lifeless rock that sat in the Outer Rim between Hutt Space and Wild Space; it was once the home to a prison run by the Galactic Empire, which, funnily enough, was really once the Republic. It had been converted into one of a few secret bases that the First Order maintained in the event that their fledgeling conquest was temporarily bested, much like how Emperor Palpatine had planted the seeds of the First Order in the Unknown Regions in preparation for his Empire’s eventual fall.

Despite being no one’s prisoner, Armitage Hux still very much felt like one in the stark surroundings of his new base. A converted prison was not even close to comparable to his precious _Finalizer_ ; there was no prestige, no mobility, no security in its armament, though it was protected by a battery of ground-to-air cannons and even a few orbital defence satellites, and _certainly_ no A.N.I.

“A.N.I., bring on the lights and increase the scrubber cycles,” the tired redhead called out to his new quarters, but there was no reply and no change in his surroundings. Realizing his mistake, his legs went out from under him and crashed painfully on the cold floor. He hid his face in his gloved hands and wept.

* * *

While the converted prison had been given quite the makeover, it was only a matter of time before something went wrong. The possibilities were too many to ignore: being discovered by the Republic, or at least someone who would sell them out to the Republic, attacked by pirates, or bounty hunters, critical systems failures, even just running out of provisions.

The General Without An Army was finding that managing such a crisis was not exactly in his drydock. Settling what basically amounted to domestic disputes was not something he had the patience for, because people tended not to squabble over such things when there was the threat of a court-martial, but on Akrit’tar the only law, was, well… the word of the person that was most feared.

So a problem arose when General Pryde’s ship slipped into geosynchronous orbit and dispensed much-desired provisions and a superior officer with almost double the experience as the red-haired commander of a dead flagship.

Under normal circumstances, Armitage Hux was known for his ruthlessness, his cunning, and, under normal circumstances, he would have known how to deal with the power struggle that was destined to brew in the secret base. Under normal circumstances, he would have made it clear that he was not one to be crossed and certainly not one to be underestimated, as he had been underestimated his entire life and those who made that mistake found that it was a _terrible_ mistake that also happened to be their _last_.

But these were not Normal Circumstances.

Armitage was tired and heartbroken. He was disillusioned with the power that he’d expected, no longer so foolish as to believe he could have brought an entire galaxy under his heel.

Armitage Hux was defeated.

This time he was not so blind as to fight it. The struggle was over and all of those people who had underestimated him had been at least a little right. Finally, his father’s words rang true; Armitage felt thin and useless, much like a slip of paper that was falling out his long pale fingers.

So he conceded his place at the head of the table to General Pryde, much to the surprise of the First Order’s remnant officers and soldiers, though also much to their relief.

He was still a general in name, but the title felt empty, a consolation prize for knowing his place like a proper little soldier. His place had been in the observation deck of the old prison, listening at a console for any communications that managed to come through their ancient antennae. It should have been embarrassing, being reduced to such a simple-minded task simply because there were not enough personnel to go around, but Armitage actually found his shifts… _restful_. The room was fairly quiet, save for the beeping of the computers and the shifting of Lieutenant Mitaka in his chair at the security console. He would find little things to fix and work on them as he waited for messages, not even caring if any came through. Sometimes he would talk to his partner, pleasant little conversations that slowly became more familiar as the wall between two officers, one supposedly superior to the other, slowly crumbled.

Armitage was working on a malfunctioning mouse droid when the proximity alarm was raised on the other console. With disinterest the redhead looked up at the nervous lieutenant. “What’s it this time, Dopheld, another meteor?”

“No, sir,” the meek officer answered reflexively. His fingers were darting across the controls in front of him. Armitage set the mouse droid aside, the poor thing emitting a plaintive electronic cry from where it was left behind, and approached Dopheld’s chair with three large steps. He did not speak, merely placed a calming hand on the younger man’s shoulder as he made his own inferences regarding the readouts. “A ship, little larger than a shuttle.”

“No ship I’ve ever seen,” Armitage muttered under his breath. “Do we have visual yet?”

“Just a second.” Dopheld pressed a series of buttons and the holo-emitter on top of the console flickered to life, producing a 3-dimensional approximation of the starship, the image gaining definition as it approached their location. “It’s slowing, coming to a steady position, just outside the range of the orbital defence grid.”

“What do you see, Dopheld?” The lieutenant gave him a confused squint. Without reprimand, Armitage lifted an oil-smudged finger, interrupting the holo-emitter’s stream when he misjudged the distance. “Those are definitely T-70 wings, but their closed position is very unique, subtle.”

The lieutenant checked the readouts to confirm that the ship was holding position before he leaned in to inspect its shimmering model. “There’s some… _Upsilon_ shaping… The nose is a… modified T-70 cockpit…” His fingers glided over his console. The continued immobility of the starship made some readings possible. “The engines are… modified from a _Resurgent_ -class,” he added with obvious awe. “There are a lot of systems signatures that only come from a capital ship. The hull is _very_ sturdy.”

For a moment Armitage just stared at the image, occasionally glancing at the readouts. Just barely above a whisper he asked the air, “What is it _doing?_ ”

“I don’t know, sir,” Dopheld replied, though he knew that it wasn’t necessary. “Should we… contact them?”

“We’re running enough power that I think any starship with a hyperdrive would be capable of determining that this base is operational. There’s no use pretending no one’s home.” Armitage tapped out a string of commands. He nudged Dopheld, prompting the younger officer to stand up and relinquish his seat to his former superior. The redhead cleared his throat nervously, took a deep breath, and pressed the button on the communicator. “Unidentified craft, identify yourself and your intentions.”

“ _Akrit’tar Base, this is the independent vessel Saviour, requesting permission to land. Our weapons systems are off-line._ ” The voice unfamiliar and electronic, almost as if it was passed through several vocabulators on its way to his ears. Armitage verified that their weapons systems were indeed off-line.

“What is your business here, _Saviour_?” There was an edge to his voice. A little disappointment too.

“ _We have some damage, pirates, we’re just looking for a nice atmosphere to fix it._ ”

In the background he could’ve sworn he heard some indignant droid beeps and a woman’s voice hissing something he couldn’t understand. It was very obviously fishy and a lie, but…

“I can only let you through with the defences locked on,” Armitage explained rather confidently.

“ _No problem, I’d be insulted if you didn’t._ ”

“And you will be under armed guard.”

“ _The more the merrier._ ”

Armitage and Dopheld shared a glance.

* * *

The sleek black hull of _Saviour_ slipped into the hangar and was quickly surrounded by a contingent of armed stormtroopers and officers. While the starship had come into range, a scan indicated one lifesign, though only General Hux had noticed that there was something off about it.

That was because he’d programmed that lifesign signature himself.

He now stood primly, proudly, hoping to show the ship’s only crewman that he was the person she had last seen.

Her Maker.

Armitage’s face shifted with confusion as a gold-and-silver BB-9E unit rolled down the ramp and regarded the gathered troopers as if it was their superior officer. They raised their guns as another shape suddenly appeared, and hesitated as they saw it was an IT-SOO unit, custom red. The droids beeped, chirped, and whistled to one another, the BB-unit bored in contrast to the IT’s excitement.

Then footsteps, heavy and swaggering, echoed from within and descended the ramp. Their maker stood at the bottom, surveying her armed guards. A smirk quirked her lips as mechanical eyes landed on a head of red and there was the near-silent whirr of apertures dilating.

“Long time, no see, General.”

* * *

“What in the _world_ is going on here, Hux?”

General Pryde regarded the three droids before him, though to his knowledge, it was 2 droids and a human woman. At least, he assumed it was a woman, but some bits were a bit too ‘manish’ for his tastes. There was something strange about her, but he couldn’t quite place what it was. Pryde silently decided to check in with their one medical officer.

“I apologize for the cloak and dagger,” A.N.I. said politely with just a shine of humour, “as thin of a cloak and as dull of a dagger as it was, but I’m only here for the former general. Not really concerned about what all else is going on here.”

“A bounty hunter, then?” the older man posited with a dash of disdain and a tablespoon of dismissiveness. Her mechanical blue eyes moved briefly to Armitage Hux where he stood at parade rest and slid back, a smirk appearing as they did so.

“You could say something like that. We used to work together. I’ve come to collect on an old debt. Figured now was a good time, with the First Order a mere footnote on the HoloNet news feeds.”

“I need him,” Pryde insisted firmly, though not entirely convincing. “You cannot simply walk away with one of my top officers.”

“I find that hard to believe,” A.N.I. commented while inspecting her perfect nails, nails that were buffed to almost a mirror shine, “considering you have him sitting in a radio room waiting for messages and radar blips, working on mouse droids.”

General Pryde fixed her with a withering glare, but behind him Armitage was barely containing a proud grin. The android didn’t betray a thing, even when the man started talking again. “Be that as it may, I-”

“ _Be it as it may_ , general, the First Order, to which Hux swore his allegiance, is formally dissolved, as per the Supreme Leader Ren’s surrender on Mon Cala,” she bravely interrupted, not fearing a thing. “It’s not desertion if the army doesn’t exist.”

“I will not have him leave, it would be a _liability_ ,” Pryde finally admitted. A.N.I. cocked her head to the side.

“Well, then, I have good news.” The general straightened his already ram-rod straight posture as the android leaned forward across the table, bracing herself on its surface even though she didn’t need to. “Someone’s already singing like a canary. It’s only a matter of time before that song leads the Republic here.”

“Who-” He stammered, obviously flustered. “How-”

“I have a great many skills, and while looking for my friend here” a nod was thrown in Armitage’s direction “I picked up some very juicy intel.”

Pryde was stunned into an uncharacteristic silence. He didn’t even speak before she revived the conversation. “So, if I were you, I’d take everyone away from here. Somewhere not on your little list of old Imperial safehouses.”

* * *

None of them owned very much, so there was nothing to pack, but the _Saviour_ ’s crew had picked up some extra things that A.N.I. had chosen to give out to the downtrodden remnants of the First Order. After a stormtrooper had left its hold with a few packets of high-quality MREs, Armitage Hux took his first step into the after-market starship. Much like Kylo Ren had done, he marvelled at its design, his mouth falling open in astonishment.

“I never thought…” he said softly, not really processing what he wanted to say.

“I’ve grown,” A.N.I. explained, saving him the embarrassment of cobbling together a sentence worse than the cobbled-together starship. “I thought about erasing the memory of who made me, maybe… make it like I could start over.”

“Why didn’t you?” Armitage asked, finally giving her his undivided attention. The android shrugged, her artificial muscles rippling under artificial skin.

“In the end… I couldn’t bear to forget you,” she said softly. After a moment she added with a chuckle, “And you’d know who I was, so it’s not like I could really start over, right?”

“I suppose that’s true…” The former general turned his gaze to his boots. Seeing his melancholy, A.N.I. gently took hold of his hand.

“Come on, I’ll show you something that should make you smile.”

A few minutes later, the secret compartment in the shuttle’s personal quarters was exposed and the black gabberwool greatcoat was produced, much to Armitage’s excitement. Like a child on Life Day, he immediately slipped it on and wrapped his arms around himself, revelling in the weight and familiar smell of the garment. The android extended a hand, a single black glove resting in her powerful palm, and he took it gingerly. He produced its lonely mate from a pocket and tugged them both on, inspecting his hands out away from him.

“Thank you,” Armitage whispered. Much more certainly he added, “Thank you so much for coming to find me, for saving me. You could have left me for dead or… or turned us all in.”

A.N.I. shrugged, but not because it was a frivolous matter. “I owe you my life, don’t I?”

The flesh-and-blood human sank down onto the narrow bed and folded his hands in his lap, not looking up at his creation. “I’ve done such horrible things. What am I supposed to do?”

“Well, the really horrible thing wasn’t your idea, yeah?” she offered, but knowing it wasn’t very convincing she didn’t press it. “If you want me to turn you in, I will, but I’m not really sure that’s the best course of action.”

“Nothing I can do would make things right,” Armitage mumbled, putting his face in his hands.

“That’s certainly true…” It wasn’t exactly an encouraging statement, she realized. “I thought we could spend the rest of your life helping people out. It won’t bring all those other people back… and a lot of people want you dead… and really I should hate you too…” A.N.I. sat down next to him, using her inhumanly strong muscles to keep her weight from crushing the bed. “Nothing will make you feel better, because following orders is no excuse, but this is a big galaxy that needs a lot of helping and is easy to disappear in.”

He chuckled, but it was a sad sound. “I suppose if I hate myself the entire time, doing some good is better than rotting in a cell.”

She clapped him on the back. “That’s the spirit, Maker.”

“Please, just Armitage.”

“Nah, I’m gonna go with ‘Armie,’ because you’re going to call me Ani,” the android corrected him. Armitage smiled fondly at her, taking in the sight as if he hadn’t seen her in a lifetime. She thought he was so beautiful that she felt compelled to lean forward and press her lips against his.

Armitage hesitated for a moment, allowing himself just a moment of unrestrained bliss before pulling away suddenly. “We shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” A.N.I. asked softly. “I’ve had time away, I’m not the person you knew. It’d be like meeting an old friend-”

“Because I _made you._ ”

“Armie,” she breathed, capturing his chin in her strong but gentle grip. “It is one thing if you don’t want me, I understand that, but I think it is safe to say we cannot assign normal human parameters to our relationship, no matter which form it takes. Besides, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve grown independent of your desires; everything I want now is because _I_ want it.”

As if in agreement, Armitage captured her face in his gloved hands and smashed his face against hers.

An insistent squeaking sounded at the door, startling the human half of the pair out of their intimate moment. When it opened, the two were greeted by an anxious mouse droid being held by a just-as-nervous Dopheld Mitaka. “I apologize, but… I wish to go with you.”

The Maker and his Creation shared a look before turning back to their guests. “I think that would be fine. Perhaps we need a bigger ship…”

 _We know where to get parts_ , Ben said over _Saviour_ ’s intercom system. Armitage and Dopheld recognized it as the voice that had answered their hail.

“Welcome aboard, Dopheld,” A.N.I. confirmed with a smile. It sobered for her next thought. “I want to apologize for how I was when we first knew each other. I assure you, my personality is much more sophisticated now and such mistakes will not happen again.”

The young man took a moment to respond, but he smiled eventually. “I understand. I’m really impressed with all you’ve done since I last saw you.”

As if on cue, Betty and Sumi approached the open door to join the rest of their fellow crew. Armitage grinned as Dopheld allowed himself to be inspected by the medical droid’s curious prodding.

* * *

“Isn’t Coruscant just about the _last_ place we want to go?”

“We’re just picking up one last thing,” A.N.I. started to explain, most of her focus on making sure the city-planet’s defences found nothing fishy about their ship or their approach, “and then we’ll be off.”

They’d spent the last three weeks on Atollon deconstructing and reconstructing _Saviour_ to accommodate more humans, more engine power, more _fire_ power, and more cargo area for the scrap that they would later sell for a heap of credits. Armitage had broken down into tears at the sight of his precious _Finalizer_ doomed to a lifetime of rotting on the desert planet, but knowing that he was surrounded by her machine spirit made him feel a bit better.

 _Saviour_ slipped through the airways in perfect compliance with air-traffic controls until it reached the dirty and unwanted underbelly of the city. Once away from the prying eyes of upstanding citizens and police actually concerned with public safety and not just their own safety, they made the straightest path to an abandoned warehouse.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Dopheld muttered from his place behind Armitage. A.N.I. laughed to herself.

“Oh, hush, don’t be so dramatic,” the android chided him playfully as she landed the large shuttle-- practically a freighter now-- with expert grace on the warehouse’s shipping platform.

A lone figure, robed in blacks and dark greys, its face obscured by a low hood, stood just inside the warehouse’s dilapidated doorway. At its feet laid an unassuming bag.

A.N.I. brought the ship’s microphone to her mouth, staring at the figure through the front viewport as she did so.

“Get in, loser.”

“Is anyone going to tell me what is going on?” Armitage complained, crossing his arms and sinking back into his co-pilot’s chair.

 _Ani and Ren are friends,_ Ben answered in a sing-song electronic voice. _Ani and Ren, sitting in a penthouse-_

“ _ **What-**_ ”

“Shut up, Ben-”

_K-I-S-S-_

The android slammed a button on the con and the voice stopped. Both pairs of human eyes were fixed on her. Indignantly she muttered, “I did no such thing.”

“ _Ren_ , of all people?” Armitage asked, obviously upset.

“I did him a favour and he did me one.”

“That makes you even,” the redhead had insisted. Dopheld merely looked as if he wanted to take his chances with the Republic.

“I think we all possess the capacity to get along.” A sound resonated from deep within _Saviour_ ’s hold. The loading ramp started to close. “Just think of the good we can do.”

“This is a _horrible_ idea,” Armitage made clear, but there was a defeated sigh in his voice.

“Well, _I’m_ the captain and what _I_ say goes,” A.N.I. had attempted to put the matter to rest. The sound of boots stopped at the cockpit’s threshold behind them. They all turned their eyes to regard their new crewmember.

The man once known as Kylo Ren, and before that Ben Solo, and now just Kenobi-- a nod to his original namesake but not too close-- graced the assembled humanoids with a cocky grin reminiscent of a certain legendary smuggler.

“Show me what this hunk of junk can do.”

A.N.I. turned to the con with a grin.

“Course laid in. First stop: **Corsaira.** ”


End file.
